¤ Link Exchange Outsourcing as part of a wider link-building program, setting up a link exchange either through a single page or an installed directory can be a good idea. However, of all the link-building tactics this is possibly the weakest. On the one hand, you can build up a wide linkage with other sites. In terms of theme or topic-associated ranking, this can have clear advantages – presuming that the sites you exchange links with are of a related nature by topic.

The big weakness is that the primary aim of a link building outsourcing is to build a greater number of Inbound Links (IBL's). And with a link exchange program you are offsetting the number of links coming in with an equal number of links going out. Of course, you can always try and sabotage the Outbound Links (OBL's) with a robots.txt file, javascript, sessions IDs or modifying the URLs. However, that hardly going to encourage people to link to you – and thus the entire reason for the policy in the first place becomes flawed.

There is another insidious weakness, though.

¤ Link Exchange Outsourcing programs lead to a very unnatural pattern of linkage. It should be well within the capabilities of modern search engines to spot this unnatural pattern, and deal with it accordingly. Perhaps some do, but if not, like the Sword of Damocles, the very real threat of devaluation of link exchange programs could be hanging just above.

The point is (excuse the pun) not to put too much faith in link exchange programs in themselves, and most certainly do not put too much emphasis on automated Link Exchange Outsourcing programs such as Link Builder. Although these programs can be a great way to Link Exchange Outsourcing quickly and effortlessly, you can be pretty sure that they are also quickly creating a very noticeable anomaly in the pattern of how sites link.

¤ Link Exchange Outsourcing programs do have advantages in terms of gaining links from related themed sites, which may be especially relevant with an expert system. However, you shouldn't put too much emphasis on link exchanges alone precisely because of its weaknesses. However, at the end of the day, remember that links are the currency of SEO. If you outsource link exchange, you give away as much as you earn. You need to concentrate on ways to amass that currency so that you can keep hold on to it.

» Reciprocal linking is dead !!

Now just because one scammer has abused reciprocal links and distorted the true purpose of this practice, does it have to mean that everyone else will do this? No. But it does mean that others will adopt the scam technique and the value of links pages will drop dramatically because webmasters will no longer trust the process. We can't.

Scammers are a tight knit group that love to share their scams and schemes with each other. Reciprocal linking is definitely dead and this scam will inevitably go viral, just as every other abuse and scheme before it have done. Reciprocal links pages are as dead as FFA links pages.

Google has already seen the writing on the wall and only shows backlinks with a PageRank 4 or better. Webmasters seeking reciprocal links have consequently adopted a new strategy when seeking link partners. They breathlessly announce that the page your link will go on is ranked at PR4 at Google.

What's next ? PageRank creep! Now that linking has been perverted, Google will begin showing backlinks with PR5 and then PR6, etc. Reciprocal link partners will claim that your link will be placed on a PR7 page and so on. Google essentially negated PR1, PR2 and PR3 by showing no back links with those ranks from their own index!

So after a bit of agonizing over the state of the web, thinking about how I can't even troll through the 2500 messages that are quarantined by my Spam Filter program because I don't have time, I decided to end link swaps. Email used to work. FFA pages used to work. Reciprocal links pages used to work. Free classified ads used to work.

What still works ? Content works and I am reluctantly going to insist on content from anyone who wants links from my sites or client sites. I've got to like what the contributor has to say and I've got to agree with their article before I'll publish it and link back to them from that article, press release or news