Ever since Google started implementing different safeguards against violations of their guidelines people have been trying to find loopholes. The lengths that people will go to in order to find a shortcut to a top rank can be astounding. Some are more elegant than others, and for a while the three way link exchange was one of the more effective ways to work around Google’s demands. The question is whether or not they are still a good idea. The short answer is that they are not, and that you’re better off seeking more organic ways to build links. But stick around for the long answer, because you should know why they aren’t a good idea so you have a better idea of what proper link building methods look like going forward.

Link building is one of the most basic steps you have to take when done by web designer Dubai. In the beginning it was incredibly easy, but as time has gone on Google has gotten smarter and smarter about how it judges the quality of links. One example of this change is the topic of link exchanges. Everyone wants links. The problem is you need other sites to link to yours. How do you get that to happen? An obvious solution was offering a trade. If you link to me, I’ll link to you. It seemed like the perfect plan. The problem is Google only wants sites linking to pages that have earned the link based on quality SEO consultants, not just brazen trading. So it updated it’s algorithm to try and combat this practice.

Once people realized that link trades were being punished they sought out a techniques that would produce similar results without raising Google’s suspicion. The three way exchange was that that work around. Instead of site A linking to site B and site B linking to site A they’d bring in a third site. Now Site A would link to site B, site B would link to site C and site C would link to site A. Everyone gets a link and it looks more natural

This new move worked well for a while, but eventually Google caught up. Every day Google’s algorithm gets more sophisticated when it comes to targeting sites that use unnatural link building techniques. One red flag is that these sort of trades produces unnatural looking connections. A used car site might have linked to medical, legal and electronics sites. This is not the sort of thing that authentic authority sites generally do. Or if it does happen it’s fairly rare, whereas a site that has been involved in a lot of link trading will have a link profile that’s all over the map.

Today there are still people trying to do these sort of exchanges. The problem is that most of these sites are low on quality and standards. They tend to accept any sort of link, going for links in bulk instead of focusing on qualtity. In the end this will catch up to them. Many people doing this sort of thing don’t care, building up one site, making money and then watching it fall apart as they move on. The problem is that they may end up taking down a lot of other sites with them. It’s one thing if a site with great content and real authority in your field wants a trade, but this sort of thing is unlikely unless you have already built up your own site’s content to the point that you are already getting plenty of organic links. Don’t become a victim, comply with Google’s demands and build links honestly. Avoid building links that don’t provide anything to searchers. Keep your users in mind and you are much less likely to fail.