Why would you need LINK EXCHANGES for SEO?

Two main reasons, to get traffic, to get higher PR. Go to  http://xchangetextlinks.com/ and sign yourself up. Much better than banner exchanges-the site offers you the chance to immidiatly take part in relevant text link exchanges-I will explain why this is important in a momment.

Ok, lets say that your site sells cat food. The best thing for you to do in SEO terms is to link with other cat/food/cat product related sites with PR. In SEO terms even if you can get a PR 4 site selling golf balls to link to you, search engines may mark it as a non- relevant link exchange and ignore it. Far better to get links from similar or closely related sites.

If you own a huge network of sites....be vey carefull about linking them all up. Instead, try linking sites a-b to c-d instead. The search engines can detect patterns, and if you link every single one of your sites up ro all the others-they will smell a rat and penalise you! Not the way to SEO.

Try a google search and look for sites similar or related to your own ans email the webmasters requesting an exchange. Try to wait a short time till your site has at least a little PR-other webmasters are more likely to agree to an exchange if you do.

Be careful who you link too-google them and make sure that the site has not been banned, or that the webmaster that you are exchanging with is not a cheat. Google them-if they are someone  who cheats it is very likely someone has reported them before on a webmaster board at some point.

Check up on your link exchanges every so often, you may find that people cheat and remove your link-or they could have had a mishap and accidently lost your link. Some webmasters may be worse than cheats and re-direct your link to illegal sites-so check up on them from time to time.

Three way linking explained. Now I have talked all through the site about one way backlinks. A one way link (These means site A links to your site and your site does not link back) are very valuable to you in SEO terms. So do get your site in as many non reciprical link directories as possible. Also-if you know any bloggers-see if they are prepaired to 'review' your site adding a link to it. Now, once you have got a few link exchanges or are a regular on a few webmaster boards, you may be in a position to set up some three way linking. Three way link exchanges work this way-You have 2 cat food sites A AND B. You get chatting to a webmaster who has 2 cat fod sites 1 and 2. Now, you agree to link to site 1 from site A of your sites, he links to site A of your site on his site 2. So instead of direct site to site straight link swops-you can both link to each other from different sites to the original site in question.

To explain it another way in SEO terms, you may well see posts such as this on webmaster boards: