Microsoft Says Link Exchanges Help Boost Rankings in Search Engines

[admin]

We’ve said it and said it and said it. We’ve backed our assertions with logic and examples and quotes from various search-engine guidelines and directives. But never has a senior manager at an industry leader like Microsoft come right out and in plain English confirmed what so many people have known — or at least suspected — for so long … link exchanging can still — right now in 2008 — “help boost rankings in search engines.”

For more on this click http://blog.linksmanager.com/?p=80

[The Old Sarge]

You mean there are people that seriously think otherwise? ;)

[The Leader]

You can watch your site push its way up the search results the more links you get!

[The Old Sarge]

You can watch your site push its way up the search results the more links you get!

Can you explain how in-bound links improve your position in SE results?

[The Old Sarge]

Search engines also count the valid inbound links to your site, and use this figure to determine your site relevance for certain search terms.

Not disputing that claim, but where did you get that information?

[Duke]

Inbound links have been found to make significant and positive contributions to the overall range, popularity and traffic of a website that uses it.Sometimes also called back links,are simply links in other sites which when clicked lead back to your site. It has long been used in promoting and improving the search engine rankings of websites.If the site that links to you is relevant and regularly crawled by major search engines such as Google, for example, then search engines would be able to find you faster.

Search engines also count the valid inbound links to your site, and use this figure to determine your site relevance for certain search terms. The higher your relevance, the higher your rank, and the more likely your potential buyers will visit your site. Remember that 85 percent of internet users go to search engines when looking for particular products and services. Improve your search engine ranking through inbound links, and you will surely be able to reach a bigger market in no time.

As reasonable as this sounds I don't see it as being the "end all" or "winning formula" for a particular keyword or keyword phrase ranking high in the SERPS. I have some completely ridiculous articles that offer little other than a chuckle to site visitors yet they rank extremely high in the SERPS; in fact no further back than page 2.

While unique this content offers precious little value and only remotely compliments my sites overall theme. Conversely, I have content that is very unique, well researched, and far more "SEO Friendly" but yet rank much lower in the SERPS. One can argue that the popularity of the keyword phrases may be the difference in why I'm ranking which would make sense if all results were similar which they don't seem to be.

I think just like anything, linking whether it be inbound or reciprocal is only a part of the formula that determines a sites success. This is why it's wise never to put your eggs in one basket because it's the sum of the work you do that makes your site succeed or fail, not the individual page, article or backlink.

[Phil Staff]

Part of the Formula is the important phrase.

From my understanding there are about 200 or so parts to the formula. Yes linking is high on the list just as content is. Another part is traffic, age of your domain, number of pages, frequency of content updates, natural link acquisition among many others.

Again this is all hearsay because the SE's won't give out that information. I have seen website with long drawn out formulas and they try to break them down into human language but it isn't that easy.

The LinksManager mantra: Do what is right for your end user and qualified traffic will come without the need for search engine returns. Someone coming from another site to your site should be considered valuable as they are already from another relevant site and not just running through SERP's.

Remember quality reciprocal linking has been around since before the SE's and will be here after the SE's. It used to be the only way you could find another site, by clicking on a link in a different site. Now the SE's came along to make finding sites 'easier' but with that comes bad SERP's that no one can make any sense of.

I still get over 30% of my traffic from the sites I exchange links with. Tough not to ignore that section of my visitors.

Phil Staff

[Duke]

Not to take this discussion too far off base but one thing you can do to immediately help your site is purchase your domain name for 2+ years (5 years if you can).

This shows everyone including the SE's that you're serious about creating an online presence and I've heard it can help with your rankings. I can say for a fact that I personally purchased my domain for 2 years and I was listed in dmoz within 2 weeks of applying on a 6 - 8 month old low traffic site (coincidence or a bored editor, you be the judge).

Also, I hit PR 6 of 10 within my first 1.5 years online (has fallen to 4 after my complete site software changes) which I attribute soley to link exchanges however I do not believe Page Rank of incoming links was not the reason I reached 6, relevancy was.

Many webmasters will only link with sites that have a PR value of 2-4 or higher and tend to ignore those 0 PR sites which I think is a big mistake. Most of the sites I linked to had a PR value of 0 - 2 with dmoz having the highest value of 4 or 5.

In essence, ignore PR and NEVER link because you can, link because it actually compliments your sites purpose/theme/focus/goal/direction.

[websurfer]

Link Exchange is really very helpful for ranking and PR.
Before 3 months, my site has no any back link and also no resource pages, Than i created 25 resource pages and started exchanging links with my theme related sites. now after 3 months, my site has 4 PR and ranking in 11 to 30 on my main 10 keywords.

My Site is not well optimized, as i don't have more knowledge about on page seo, so i have just make some seo friendly titles, meta and working on link building. right now i am on link exchange and social bookmarking.