Link popularity is ultimate parameter in achieving supreme exposure on web for your web site. Link popularity is measured by number and quality of inbound links to your site. Inbound links help to attain high search engine rankings for your web site, while producing an invaluable traffic stream from visitors clicking through on links themselves. But your goal will remain unrealized unless you implement an intelligent link exchange strategy.

At same time you should not go overboard in quest of getting more and more links. Quality should not be sacrificed at cost of quantity. You should utilize your link exchange process so that it can win high quality links (which are links from websites that are complementary to your business and have high page ranks) for your web site, not abundant unproductive links.

Considering inbound links to your web site are a decisive factor for improved search engine ranking, you have to make sure that your incoming links are of similar theme. The companies that you link to should offer a product or service that is complementary to yours, however not in competition. Irrelevant links will not fulfil your objective.

Increased and Targeted Traffic

Effective link exchange can attract larger, quality and targeted traffic to your web site. The link exchange process helps you establish innumerable fruitful partners with other relevant web sites. Thus, you can win more quality and targeted visitors from your link partners. According to a June 2003 Forrester Research survey report, '59% of Internet consumers find web sites through links from another site'.

Enhanced Visibility

Shortly after it went live I realised that nobody apart from me could see it and it started to dawn on me what this 'Internet thing' is all about. It is not about having a stand-alone website plonked somewhere that nobody will ever see - it is about being part of an INTERconnected NETwork of other websites. INTER-NET. The penny dropped - I needed to start getting connected to other websites.

Much has changed since then (my hair got longer, shorter and has since started to recede further up my head for one thing) but it seems desire and pressure you face as a website owner to exchange links shows no signs of fading. But link swapping is killing your website! Here's 5 Reasons why...

Reason No. 1 - It's Addictive!

It's true. You might not be that far down link-swapping path yet but I promise you it will happen sooner or later. One day you'll find yourself laughing like a maniac as you run a report to see how many in-bound links you have and start rubbing your hands gleefully as you reach that magic milestone you set yourself six months ago. You'll start mainlining reciprocal links:

"Just one more link. Please - all I need is one more link!"

Take a deep breath, step back from precipice and think for a moment. Why do you want all these links pointing to your website? No, honestly - why do you REALLY want all these links pointing to your website? To improve link popularity? You're falling into trap. Do you want it to boost that little green bar that Google assigns to your page? (see toolbar.google.com) Wise up!

Reason No. 2 - It Is Eating Away At Your Time Like A Hungry Hippo!

Just take a look at last time you went out looking for a link and got it. How long did it take you? Not long? Well, let me put this another way - how long did it take you to find right type of websites, look through those and find ones that even have a links page, find contact information for websites you wanted to contact, create email, send email, respond to email, place their link on your website, check that they reciprocated with you, email back and forth a few times more and so on...?

If you add up all minutes that each of these elements takes you could be looking at half an hour per reciprocal link established - maybe even longer!

And don't think you're cutting corners if you're using software. It might be quicker to find possible linking partners using software but it's a false economy as, to my knowledge, people are still cleverer than machines.