March 15, 2011

Lately, I’ve been trying to do a bit of search engine optimization for myself by gaining trading backlinks with other local and non-local web designers. While Google and the other large search engines generally don’t approve of this, it’s considered more grey or white hat SEO than black hat SEO. In my search for different Windsor web designers to trade links with, I found that many of them didn’t know about the different type of link trades that are possible. I figured, I may as well write up a quick post about it and then refer to it anytime I offer someone a backlink in exchange for a link on one of their sites.

There are 3 main different types of link trades; A-B, A-B-C and A-B-C-D. If possible, you want to try to gain more ABC and ABCD trades than AB because it’s easier for the search engines to detect a straight AB reciprocal link trade. Let me explain the trades further.

A-B Trade: This trade is also known as a reciprocal link trade. Basically it’s a 1 for 1 swap of links between your site and your friend or colleagues site. For example; yoursiteA.com links to theirsiteB.com and theirsiteB.com links to yoursiteA.com.

A-B-C Trade: This trade is a bit more difficult to work out because it involves 3 sites instead of 2. For example; yoursiteA.com links to theirsiteB.com and theirsiteB.com links to yoursiteC.com. Obviously, it could also work if they had 2 websites and you had one. For example; theirsiteA.com links to yoursiteB.com and yoursiteB.com links to theirsiteC.com.

A-B-C-D Trade: This is probably the most beneficial trade of all because it’s basically impossible for Google or the other search engines to detect. This type of trade involves 4 sites, so while it’s the most beneficial it’s also the hardest to find. For example; yoursiteA.com links to theirsiteB.com and theirsiteC.com links to yoursiteD.com. This way there is no connection between your link trade at all.

I personally try to focus on A-B-C trades because they’re a bit easier to find than A-B-C-D trades and are much more beneficial than A-B trades. In all reality, any backlink you can get to your site will help you rank higher in the search engines, so whether it’s A-B, A-B-C or A-B-C-D, I say get it done and get ranked higher!