Link exchanges are the most important factor that help you website to increase traffic and improve your page rankings in search engines. The more links give to your website the better rank in search engines , but not all requests must be accepted without inspection because there are several webmaster using deceptive link strategies that not only don't help you but can hurt your reputation and your page rank.

The first thing to do is to choose the highly relevant category to your website and the higher page rank and avoid the link exchange scam.

There are several factors to look when you beginning your link exchanges campaign:

1- The Google Page Rank page system will give you an elevated rate if you link from a higher Page Rank page so link from low value Page Rank sites is a waste of time and effort unless you think the Page Rank will go up in the next few months.

The best strategy is to link to directory with Page Rank of at least 5 for the main page and at least a Page Rank of a 2 for the category page that your site would possibly be listed under to have.

2- Some directories will not give you a direct link to your domain, meaning they will also not pass on a link value or Page Rank and this by using tacking URL.

Choose one of the listed website in the directory and check the URL showing on the bottom of your browser, if you see a direct link to this site that is an excellent indication but if the link shows a tracking URL, then you omit submitting to that directory.

3- No Follow Tags: The Rel NOFOLLOW Tag informs search engines not to follow that link and give it credit. It was created for site owners to control spam on Blogs, forums and guest book type sites, but some webmasters have began using this tag to try and keep Page Rank Value from passing on to other external sites and keep their own rankings higher.

To verify this situation you check the source code of the site to see if the links are a direct link using HTML tag such as: a href="http://www.mydomain.com/" mydomain/a>

But if you see a Rel NOFOLLOW tag so that will be something like this:

a href="http:// www.mydomain.com /" rel="NOFOLLOW" mydomain/a>, you should skip this directory.

4- JavaScript Links: There are several techniques to hide the JavaScript:

a- Many webmaster transmit your listed link to their cgi bin where they have another page with a JavaScript redirect pointing at your site. The search engines can't read JavaScript and they can not get you credit.

b- Another tricks, webmasters will list your site in their directory and the link take the visitor to the website but when you ran your mouse over your link listed in their website all you see is "JavaScript: //". Search engines cannot pick up that link or give credit for the Page Rank because they can not read JavaScript.

5- Verify if the link credit gets passed on to the sites listed in the directory: Select several sites from the directory, and check their back links in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Alltheweb.

By using one of the following methods, you can verify if there are back links to the sites selected from this directory:

Google: link: www.mydomain.com OR allinurl: www.mydomain.com

Yahoo: link:http://www.mydomain.com OR linkdomain: www.mydomain.com

MNS: link: www.mydomain.com

Alltheweb:link:http://www.mydomain.com

6- Sooner you want to be listed on a page of the directory that does not have too many other sites listed. the way the Google Page Rank system works is that the more links on a page the lesser value is passed on to each site, so you should try to find categories that do not have too many other sites listed.

A web page with 20 sites is the most important to you to get listed and if there more than 50 in one page, at this time it is not interesting to have listed in this web page.

7- Avoid Spammers- Bad neighbours

Avoid to link to directory they use black hat techniques because they are considered as a bad neighbours by the search engines and they will banned you if they discovered them.

Black hat techniques are used to get used to get higher search rankings in a corrupt way. Many sites use black-hat SEO strategies to get more search engine traffic. These can a hidden text, comment tag, Meta tag stuffing and cloaking.

Check all your outgoing links with the Google tool bar and remove any that are grey barred which means they have been banned by Google.

Finally, the link exchange process is more important when you know do that right or it will become a waste of time, money and effort. For more search engine optimization and online affiliate marketing tools visit: Search Engine Optimization