Link exchange
Link
exchange is actually something that could potentially help you. The search
engines do in fact count the number of web sites that have links to your web
site.
Not
all links are equal. A single link from a highly popular website can be worth
more than a thousand linsk from an obscure website.
And
there are links that actually hurt you. The search engines do a very good job
of identifying “link farms” (sites that specialize in selling links). If your
website starts appearing in multiple link farms then the search engines will
consider your site to be spam and will actually downgrade your listing or even
ban your site from their search engine.
It
does make sense to trade links with others who have compatible websites.
Sending out spam e-mails asking for link exchanges are going to be ignored, but
you can ask others in person if they might be interested in a link exchange.
Do
be careful to avoid setting up a link exchange hoax. There are groups that
create websites that link to each other just for the purpose of fooling the
search engines into thinking that all of the sites in the group are popular.
The search engines can identify this hoax very easily and often ban all of the
participating websites from their search engine.
And
as strange as it may sound, adding one or two really good out-going links (even
if they aren’t reciprocated) can help your search engine placement. The search
engines will realize that you have quality out-going links and assume that the
rest of your material is also high quality and give you a slight boost in
ranking.