There is enough confusion surrounding what’s acceptable SEO and link building practices according to Google. However, if you look at it closely, Big G’s principles are actually easy to follow despite being ambiguous at best.

One of the ambiguous principles is Google’s reciprocal link exchange policy. How ambiguous? Just check out Google’s explanation regarding reciprocal link exchange that violates Google’s webmaster guidelines:

Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)

The number one question regarding the violation: How excessive is excessive?

Only Google knows how to measure and quantify ‘excessive.’ But we can definitely use our common sense to ‘classify’ what ‘excessive-ness’ of reciprocal link exchange:

• Avoid reciprocal link exchange with unrelated sites and/or sites that are in bad neighborhood.
• Avoid making your reciprocal linking the majority of your link building activities.
• Avoid using automated system to do bulk reciprocal link exchanging.

What if I insist to do any of the above? Well, you’ll increase your likelihood to be penalized, even banned by Google.

Here are a couple of ideas for a better link exchange campaign:

• Do inner-page link exchange – for instance: Suppose Site A and Site B exchanging links; Site A’s URL is on Site B’s page 123, Site B’s URL is on Site A’s page 789. This looks more natural than the conventional Site A – Site B top level domain link exchange.
• Do 3-way (or 4-way, even more) link exchange – for instance: Suppose Site A and Site B exchanging links; Site A’s URL is on Site B, but instead of Site B’s URL on Site A, it is placed on Site C.

Be cautious, though – even doing inner-page or 3-way link exchanging could trigger a red flag by Googlebot. Again, use your common sense – do this occasionally, and be sure to mix-and-match in backlinking – links from forums, directories, social networks and other related sites.

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