Short History of Link Exchange

It all started when webmasters and search engine optimization (SEO) experts found out that the number of web sites that link to a particular web site (let’s call it site A) is an important factor in determining A’s importance and position in SERPs (”search engine results page”). It is considered that the more web sites link to A the more important it has to be. Why else would so many webmasters link to A unless it’s a good quality web site, very usefull to its visitors, with tons of information and resources, right? It’s like when you link to a web site you give your vote to it.

What do you think happened once all of this got out to the public? Everyone started trying to get as many web sites as possible link to theirs. Easier said than done. Would you link to a web site without gaining something, unless you really have high consideration for it? I know I wouldn’t! Since many new webmasters lack financial resources, what could be the least expensive thing they could give me so I would, in return, link to their website? Well, the first thing that came to many minds was a link back. And this is how link exchange (link swap, link trade) was born. I will link to your web site if you agree to link to mine in return.

Just like everything else in this world, link exchange had its own developments.

The first phase was that of automated link exchange: programs, scripts and web sites that would automate the whole process eliminating any human intervention. Very easy and convenient. You don’t have to be an expert in trading links, though, to realize that the whole thing would kill the relevance of links between different web sites. Not everyone used such automated services. However, almost every webmaster was trading links with a bunch of totally unrelated web sites. If everyone would at least categorize their links page(s). Many didn’t even bother, though, to do at least that much. You would even see pages with well over a hundred completely unrelated links.

This situation affected the search results. Since, at that time, quality was not given that much importance by search engines, whoever had the most aggressive link exchange campaign and gained the most incoming links was the one to win the game. Thus, the web sites returned by search engines on the top positions stopped being the most relevant to a particular search term and, needless to say, they were not necessarily the best quality either.

Now try and put yourself in the position of a search engine that gave a high importance to the numebr of links. You see the quality of your search results affected by a technicality. You see people turning to some of your competition for their search needs. You have to do something, right?

Well, the first buzz was that the number of links was no longer such an important factor if it was not accompanied by quality (in this case quality translated into relevance). In plain English, 50 links from totally unrelated web sites was nothing compared to, probably, 10 from related ones (in the same area or a complementary one).

Needless to say it din’t take long for the webmasters to adjust to the new situation. The link exchange campaigns continued, but at least this time they were targeted towards related links. Some of the web sites and softwares that were offering automated link exchange solutions adjusted as well. Those who didn’t, soon got kicked off the market.

As you can see, the search engines didn’t manage to scare the webmasters into allowing linking to stay a natural process based on the appreciation of high quality web sites. As a matter of fact they were far from accomplishing such a goal. The linking campaigns that did not take into consideration the quality (and not only relevance) were still hapenning.

The solution they thought would take care of the situation was to spread the word that less and less importance was given to pages with lists of links.

You can imagine these pages as a series of commercials on radio or TV. I don’t know about you, but when commercials come on I always change the channel. They don’t really tell me much. Soemone pays for them. No TV or radio channel takes any reponsibility for the content of those commercials. What I do value though, is a personal recommendation (whether from someone who talks on a show or from a friend or family member).

This was actually the whole idea behind the search engines’ next strategy of giving less value to pages with lists of links while increasing the importance of “in-context” links.

Let’s say you write an article about web hosting. In the body of this article you link to a web site with good resources or one with really good web hosting solutions. You have just provided an in-context link to those web sites. It works like a personal recommendation. Why would you send your readers to any web site, unless you believe it has valuable content for them? By doing so you prove that you value your visitors. This makes them trust you and come back for some more resources, tips and advice. It’s a win-win situation.

The search engines look at such links like you do: they must be of good quality if you link to them in such a way.

But if you imagine our beloved webmasters and SEO speialists gave up on trying to fool the search engines, you couldn’t be any further from the reality.

A new breed of link exchange was born. You got it: in-context link exchange. I will write and publish an article that links to your web site if you write and publish one that links to mine. Of course the foundation of a (relatively) new type of business was set as well: services that would find webmasters to link to your web site (in-context links, of course). You, in exchange would agree to link back to those webmasters’ sites.

All of these drove the search engines (according to some specialists) to stop giving any importance to any kind of reciprocal links (related or not, in-context or not). I personally disagree that such drastic measures have been taken. The truth, however, is that nobody really knows what goes on behind the scenes and what are the exact algorithms of the search engines.

The whole logic behind this approach would be to discourage any webmaster from unnaturally linking to any web site. Some even go as far as saying that you might get penalized if any reciprocal links between you and other sites were found.

Due to my own experience and the fact that such a drastic measure would very easily hurt honest web sites, I personally doubt the search engines went so far.

However, there’s plenty of webmasters who either believe this rumor or are just not willing to take any chances. As a result, a new kind of link exchange was born. Link to my web site and I will either link back from another site of mine or I will ask a friend to link to you.

And the cat and mouse war will probably go on forever: search engines trying to be one step ahead of webmasters and SEO experts, while the latter trying to find their way around any measures that might threaten their positions.

What’s a guy or gal to do?

Posted in Marketing and Promotion, SEO |