What is link exchange? 

We speak of link exchange when websites exchange links. The owner of a website can register with various networks where it is possible to exchange links. This makes it a lot easier to find a link partner. Thanks to link exchange, it is possible to help each other and to share in the success. However, there are a number of caveats to this. For what exactly does a link exchange entail and how effective is it in practice? 

Definition of a link exchange 

For SEO, collecting as many qualitative links (and thus references) to your website as possible is a crucial part. The more people refer to your website, the more interesting the search engine considers your website to be. This increases the quality score of the web page and you will rank higher within the search results. Both parties benefit from a link exchange. Because the links are exchanged, both parties will profit from a higher quality score. Especially when it concerns websites that both already have a high quality score and therefore can 'leak' more linkjuice to the other page. 

In addition to a better position in the search results, they can also share (some) visitors this way. In this way, websites help each other to end up higher in the search results. It is not about paid links that are placed on another website, but links that are exchanged and placed voluntarily in order to help each other. 

This sounds great of course, but you have to be a bit careful with this. Google does not like link exchange and may consider it illegal when improving the link building of a website. If Google considers it as such, it will have a negative result on the position in the search results. Link exchange can therefore - if not handled in the right way - have a detrimental effect. 

Complex link exchange 

To prevent Google from noticing the link exchange and penalising it, a complex link exchange can also be used. In this case, there is no direct link exchange and the search engines are less likely to pick up on it. This works as follows: 

• Site A posts a link to site B
• Site B places a link to site C
• Site C places a link to site A 

This phenomenon is also called ABC link exchange. This means that you actually have various link partners who exchange links with each other all over the place. When it is done this way, it is very difficult for search engines to notice.