I will take a more detailed look at the topic of link building including the benefits, suitability of the reciprocal website and the golden rules of link exchanges.

1. Organic SEO for Small Businesses – Part III
Note: Part II of this series of articles was published on July 21st, 2009 and can be
viewed at http://www.istech.ie/blog/?p=123
Abstract: A detailed look at this area of search engine optimization focussing on link
exchanges targeted towards small businesses and sole traders.
Intended Audience: Small Business Owners/webmasters and anyone new to the world
of web design and search engine optimization (SEO) particularly those working with
small businesses and sole traders.
The second article in this series focused on link building and that theme will continue
in this 3rd article as I will take a more detailed look at the topic of link building
including the benefits, suitability of the reciprocal website and the golden rules of link
exchanges.
My assumption at this point is that you have an SEO friendly website and have
decided on the objectives of your link building strategy:
• Generate Traffic
• Build Backlinks
• A combination of both the above
As discussed in the previous article the criteria for link building strategy objectives
including geographical location of you business, products and services offered,
website facilities, target audience etc.
In the first instance we’ll take a look at reciprocal links. A reciprocal link describes an
exchange of links between two websites for the mutual benefit of both. Historically
reciprocal links have been used to improve search engines rankings as opposed to
traffic generation though their popularity has being steadily decreasing over the last
few years owing to their use by spammers, unscrupulous SEO companies etc.
There does appear to some evidence that search engines such as Google no longer
consider reciprocal links as a major factor when calculating a website’s ranking. The
conclusion we can probably draw the conclusion that the practice of link exchanges
between companies with no discernable connection should be discontinued. An
example of this would be a construction company in Madrid exchanging links with a
bicycle shop in Toronto.
Here are the current golden rules of link exchanges:
1. Only exchange links when a discernable connection exists between your
website and reciprocal website. A good example would be exchanging links
with your suppliers.
2. Never accept link exchanges from unsolicited email messages. In most case
these are scams where you given the illusion that the third party has provided
you with a link on their website.

2. 3. For every outgoing link you give away on your website you must have at least
4 incoming backlinks i.e. only a maximum of 25% of your incoming backlinks
should allocated to link exchanges.
The next article in this series will expand on the topic of link building strategies for
small businesses trusted backlinks, free and paid web directories, social media, local
directory services etc.
Eoin Redmond – 21st July 2009
Istech Technology Services Ltd
Leading Website Developer and SEO Specialists
00 353 86 154 1049
Web: www.istech.ie