Link Exchange to Improve PageRank

Link exchange to improve pagerank is a commonly used off-page SEO strategy in search engine optimization, it is believed that linking your website to other websites with similar topic will help to increase your Google PageRank.  Google gives credit, in pagerank reward, to a website that has many websites linking to it, inbound links, that have similar contents. So in theory, the more inbound links you have the higher your page-rank will become. However, executing link exchange can either be costly and/or time-consuming. You could spend hours looking up websites that have similar contents and pagerank as your website, then send them request to exchange link. Often your request will go unacknowledged. Or you could spend your hard earn cash to purchase links from another website that has high pagerank with the hope that it will improve your pagerank.

Why is it necessary to link exchange with websites having similar contents to your own website?  As far as Google PageRank calculation is concern a link from another website is equivalent to getting a thumb up from a colleague in the same field. If your website is about search engine optimization and you receive a thousand links from real estate websites, well Google gives little credit to your pagerank because those linking sites are topically irrelevant to your website.

Now let’s assume that you found a topically relevant website that has similar pagerank as your website, that agree to exchange link with you.  Here’s what you should keep in mind: Where are they placing your link? for instance if you link is buried deep within their site then it is of little value to you.  Does the linking page have a meta tag instructing search engine robot not to index, i.e. ”NOINDEX” attribute or meta tag? Does the link they create for you have a rel=”nofollow” instruction? How many links does the page have, because too many links can be interpreted by search engines as link farms and anyone linking to those site could get penalized by link association? These are just a few considerations to keep in mind when purchasing links or exchanging links to improve pagerank.