Recently, an article by Skip Chilcott, Sr. Product Manager of Microsoft has amazed many SEOs, as he openly asked the entire webmasters to participate in Link Exchange program. This is because, Link Exchange program is likely to result in providing a boost to their ranks in search engines. However, Chilcott’s statement contradicts with

Google’s Webmaster and Microsoft’s guidelines

Here is what Google has to say regarding participation in the link schemes:
“…there are some webmasters who get involved in link exchange programs and other build partner pages just for the purpose of cross linking and disregarding the quality of links. This leaves a long term impact on their sites. But the strategy totally violate the set guidelines of Google Webmaster and can also have negative affect on search engine ranking results..”

When the Google is seen stating this, Microsoft is not left supporting its competitor:
“…use of techniques like Live Search index might affect the ranking of your website or even get your website removed from the search index. Settling down for link farms techniques can artificially increase the number of links to the webpage, but it is not genuine…”
according to Yahoo !, the sites those that are cross linked excessively are considered unwanted and therefore, face lack of ranking problems.

Now the big question is that, why would Skip Chilcott publicly recommend Link exchange scheme which is a semi black hat technique? With this, he would also endorse certain firms/ softwares to help you with adopting link exchange scheme.

Why One Should Discourage Link Exchange Schemes?

Search engines have become very useful for SEOs as well as for webmasters. As a result, now they are more competitive. Every time users depend on them for finding any relevant information. The reason behind the credibility of these search engines is that they offer maximum information in a shorter period of time. But, now as many people have started gaming the search engines, this is resulting in more spam and less quality results. Thus, to stop receiving spam, this should be kept in mind that the search engines don’t consider low quality links. As for example, Google doesn’t only discount the bad links from counting but it also has strict actions in order to prevent webmasters from googling the search ranking with shady SEO techniques.
One thing remains true that reciprocal linking or participation in automated link exchange program does not completely benefit users. These are only beneficial for the webmasters who game the whole system. And if despite of abiding to some strict rules, search engines are still gamed, they will lose their usefulness.

When a Microsoft employee gives a shady advice like semi black hat SEO, it clarifies the doubt that why Live search has yet not been successful in producing good results.
Skip Chilcott came up with another post, aftet the mistake has been identified in his earlier one. For this, he took advice from colleagues over at Live Search.

Possible White Hat, which are Link Exchange

• The links that assist users in finding more relevant information about particular subject.
• Links, which are not meant for promotion or do not give link juice to a site that has spammy nature.
• Links that are meant for traffic and not at all for better search engine ranking.
• Links that you would also recommend to search engines due to the quality and highly informative details they offer.

Here are some of the natural link building techniques referred by many Search Experts:

• Should I Avoid Link Exchange / Link Trading Hubs? by Aaron Wall of SEObook.com
• 8 Ways to Buy Links without Buying Links written by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org
• 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website written by Aaron Wall working for SEOBook.com
• The definitive link building strategy offered by Web Credible
• Five Link Building Strategies That Work by Brian Clark of Copyblogger
• Link Building Tutorial – A Complete Walkthrough written by Saad Kamal

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 12:07 am and is filed under Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.