How to get link exchanges? Chris M asked this question on the last blog post comments. It’s is a good question because this is one of the easiest and simplest ways to gain links.
This method of getting backlinks is stupidly simple. All you have to do is email people asking for a link exchange (or at least that is all I do). You can also advertise your link exchange on the top webmaster forums to make getting your link exchanges even easier. Infact, just today I have done 7 link exchanges with other webmasters from sitepoint, they found me from this blog post, which was a free listing I posted a few days ago.
The best way to do a link exchange is to wait until your website has a page rank of some sort, even a page rank 1 will help. For some reason webmasters still look at your websites page rank when doing a link exchange, so its a lot easier for you when you wait a few months and get a valid page rank before you start asking people to link exchange. Lets be honest, would you link exchange (or even email the guy back) if you had a Page Rank 5 website and some guy emailed you asking to link exchange with his page rank 0 website? But what if their website was a page rank 4? Get the point?
Ok, so now your website has a page rank and you have a few hours to sending out a ton of emails asking for a link exchange. So what does the link exchange email look like? Lets move on…
Writing a link exchange email:
This is my method of getting link exchanges, there are tons of methods and you can use whichever one you want, but this is mine and has always worked well for me.
The first thing you will want to do is open up notebook and write your email out in that. Then you can keep that text file open and just copy and paste that into your email client to send to the other webmasters. You want to keep the email simple, all you need to do is ask for a link exchange and then tell the other webmaster your websites info and what he or she should do next to move forward with the link exchange. Here is what mine would look like:
———-
Hello,
I run domain.com. I am wanting to link exchange with your website. If you are interested then please add the below anchor text and url to your website and then email me back, once I see my link up I will add your link up ASAP.
Anchor: Chicken Sauce (example)
URL: chickensauce.blogspot.com (example)
———-
EDIT: You will actually get a better success rate if you add the others website up first before you send out the email. They will look at your website and see there link and more likely add your link up. This does take more time, and at the end of your link exchange campaign you will have to go in and delete all the websites that didn’t add your link up. Its up to you. 
Simple huh? Now all you have to do is type that up once, save it in notepad, and then just copy and paste that into your email message body when your ready to send it. Now lets move onto finding some sites to link exchange with.
Finding websites to link exchange with:
This is simple. All I do is type in my websites niche in google followed by “link exchange” with the quotes. That will filter all websites that are specifically looking for other websites to link exchange with. Want an example? Well if your website is about making jello, then your niche/sites category would be cooking. So all you need to do is type this into google search – cooking “link exchange” – click here for the example.
As you can see there are a few websites to link exchange with. I’m on the 7th page and I am still seeing sites just asking to be link exchanged with.
Now its time ask all those people for a link exchange. So now all you need to do is email the webmaster with the email you already wrote earlier. You just have to do it on a mass scale. Try to send 20-30 emails out a day because you will probably only get a few emails back from those 20-30 emails. Somedays you only get 1 or 2 links, someday you might get 20 links. But whether you get 1 links or 20 links… you are still getting links aren’t you?
If you have any questions at all ask them in the comments, I will answer them to the best of my abilities
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19 Comments
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Not right now, but in the past this had been very useful to me
Ideas are always welcome.
Do link exchanges really make a difference for SEO? I mean, is it really worth the effort?
I’ve received TONS of link exchange emails but they all want to put my site on page 28 of their “link page” and for me to put theirs on my front page..
Most of the time yes. Its a supplement to your other link building methods. And if you exchange with the sites your talking about then yes its no good.
I always exchange with sites that can do sitewide.
They don’t hurt but stick to same niche and don’t overdo it – you might need to chaff it up a bit too
Another great post Jon! Keep it up buddy
Another Great Post
seriously, is link exchange still worth it?
Hi Jon,
Thanks so much for the post, I really appreciate you reading all your comments and taking the time to answer in such great detail, it’s no wonder you’re doing very well online!
Keep it up!
Another fantastic post, glad you picked up on Chris M’s question, we’re all loving this fresh content!
Ok, thanks for your information, but i think that there are more actions to get links that are easier that the lik exchange.
Do you know the spambuilding, is the easiest form to get thounsand of links in 1 minute. (http://blog.comunactivo.com/2008/11/listado-de-blogs-donde-hacer.html)
Sorry, it´s only in Spanish but we have put your web in the list of blogs that help us to improve our spambulding, tx, tx, tx
Spambuilding.com
I am wary of most link exchange requests for the simple fact that webmasters remove the links without letting you know. Or worse still use underhanded redirects to make it look like they have your site listed. Have you had any experience of this?
Yes, I always have to go though my link exchanges and see which ones are still live. I bet I can make a scrip that will check each page to see if my url is on there site. Or there must be other premade scripts out there already…
People really don’t realize how easy it is for a link exchange, but at times it does seem “spammy” when you message/e-mail a person. I have experienced this both ways.
-Mike
Hey Jon how come you wont allowmy comments? I’ve been reading and commenting on this blog for over a year!
Thats quite polite, any other webmaster forums besides Sitepoint. I know DP is another place though. Maybe you should compile a list
Gila, that would be really useful!
Very nice example of how to write link exchange message to other webmaster and how to find the link exchange sites thanks very much.
The trick is to be shady and cycle your outbound links.
Week 1 you do a round of links exchanges and you have 20 new outbound links on your resources page.
Week 2 you do a second round but you remove links back to other sites when you add new ones. Some people will find these with link tracking software so you put their link back up and blame it on a new webmaster.
Rinse and repeat
??????
Profit!