Link building is one of the tools in your organic search engine
optimization (SEO) toolbox. When search engines calculate the
importance and popularity of your website for a keyword phrase, the
number of quality inbound links to your website and outbound links
to other websites with trusted information are key
considerations.
Exchanging links with anybody and everybody does not necessarily
generate any SEO value though, primarily because there is no
relationship between the content of the websites. The
likelihood is small that a person browsing a website, whose content
is not related to yours, would want to view your website. It is a
simple concept. For example, if you sell boats to consumers on your
website and your website links to a house repairs website, the link
will not generate great SEO value. If you think about it, it
does not make any sense for visitors either.
The reason to have external links is to provide visitors with
related information not found on your website. If you sell
marine supplies and accessories to consumers, but your products are
not suited to the boat building industry, then it makes sense to
have a link to boat building websites - and vice versa
probably. Best practice is to contact the boat building
company and discuss the relationship of information on the two
websites confirming the quality of the external link or link
exchange. Beware though; penalties to your website ranking
are likely if you link to websites with bad reputations. Adding a
bunch of links on your website, without doing the research and
making contact with other website owners may not do anything for
you and could actually harm your search engine ranking.
The search engines think your website contains valuable
information deserving a high ranking when there are many, quality
inbound links. Linking to other trusted websites, earns your
website a higher ranking, too. The key is to exchange links with
other quality websites and not with those websites just designed to
contain a page full of links.
More relevant inbound links likely means your website is more
popular. More popular websites achieve higher search engine
rankings. It is all about quality link building in SEO.