Ever feel like something is just out of whack or doesn’t quite add up? I was thinking about all of those three way link exchange emails received, and was wondering if they realize how elementary their theory really is.
It’s suggested that standard reciprocal links are easy to identify because your site A links to their site B, and in return their site B links back to your site A. Since the links are swapped, it’s thought that these links are discounted when it comes to the search engines and their scoring of your backlinks. So reduced or no PageRank, anchor text and SERPs boost.
Then there’s the three-way link exchange.
It’s supposedly a better way to exchange links, as you are not swapping links between just two sites. In a three-way link exchange, your site A still links to their site B, but now a third site, their site C links to your site A to complete the link exchange.
So now, no two sites are linking directly to each other. In theory, it shouldn’t be a problem with the search engines. The links are not directly exchanged, and they should be viewed and counted as one-way links.
So where’s the problem?
I’m going to guess that Google’s algorithm is advanced enough to easily identify such link exchange schemes. Since they can easily identify such attempts at deception, I’ll bet they can also discount or nullify any of the benefits that such a link might provide.
Why do I think that Google can identify 3-way linking?
Well, if it’s easy enough for guy like me to figure out that all the sites linked to from site C will also link to site B, so don’t you think that Google can piece the puzzle together as well? 😉