• Lesson Index:
• Overview
• Basic
• Google Toolbar and PR
• Alt and Title
• Funny Names
• Google Dance
• Googlebot
• Google Sandbox
• Trust Rank
• AdSense
• Google Ads
• Google Search
• AdSense for Content
• Earning Reports
• Channels
• Policies
• Filter Ads
• Promotion
• Keyword Optimization
• Information Rich Pages
• Link Exchanges
• No Tricks
• No Spam
• Web Forums
• Web Directories
• Other Ways
• Checking Up

Link Exchanges

As you have learned in the eariler lesson, Page Rank is Google's own ranking of your page. Athough there are other search engines (MSN and Yahoo being the main competitor), at the moment Google search engine is the most highly used. And America Online's search is using the Google engine. So Page Rank is important.

The higher your page rank, the higher your page will come up in the search results. To increase your page rank, you need to have good high PR sites link to your site. One way people do it is through link exchanges where "I will link to you, if you will link to me." type deals.

Places to find people to link exchange with is through forums such as this one here Or you can search the web for sites that you would like to exchange links to and just ask.

But be choosy as to who you want to link to. You do not want to have link connections either way with pron, spam, link farms, sites with excessive ads, or illegal sites. Because one of the factors that affect your PR is how "authorative" your site is. And Google determines this factor by your link connections. So if your site is connected with "bad neighborhoods", Google will consider your site low on "authority".

For the same reason, but to a lesser extent, I also don't want "spammy" sites linking to me. That is also why I never do automated web link submissions nor campains such as "submit your site to 3000 search engines", etc. You never will know where they will submit your links to.

Now that you have found someone to trade links with where on your site do you put these links. Some sites have what are known as "affiliate pages" that contains links to other sites or resources. They are also known as "Resources" pages, "Other sites" pages, "Links" pages, etc

The sites listed on these "resources" pages should be of benefit to users by linking to similar sites to your own instead of just putting up a link to an irrelevant site for the sake of reciporcial linking. Plus there is indications that Google search engine is starting to know whether you have swapped links and whether your links are relevant to your site's topic or not. See lesson on Trust Rank.

Also, to be fair to your "affiliates", you need to make this page readily accessible from your site. When others evaluate your link exchange proposals, one of the things that they look for is the placement of the link and how accessible your affiliate page is.

Next

Make sure you don't try to trick the search engine. See next lesson.