The thought of doing two way link exchange is enough to get an SEO guy sacked. It has now become sacrilegious to indulge in such practice, since Google thinks think all these practices are aimed to upsetting its algo. So, like any other grumpy and old SEO guy, you are sure to maintain a long held silence whenever a person approaches you to get a link back from your website in return of something.
Do not get yourself stuck in such limbo. Google always changes its position and changes whenever and whatever it suits its purpose. Yah, Google is a necessity and your business cannot survive without it but ask me and I will call it a necessary Evil. So, do not bother about it too much. Do the good and the great job and be generous while cumulating link for your website and believe me your website is not going to come under the scanner of Google.
Pursuit of Link Nirvana
Attaining nirvana, while trying to get links for your website is probably the hardest nut to crack. But the thing is that link building is itself a selfish practice. You are concentrating on things, which are very much centered on you like your rankings, your business model, your keywords, and the list thus goes on. Rather than focusing solely on building links, we need to utilize some powerful SEO tools like Moz, SE Ranking, Wordstream to analyze websites and fix SEO issues first so that they rank high in competitive terms.
Rather than pushing others all the time to give a link back to your website with a certain key phrase, you can voluntarily give link back to some sites that deserve to get some credit for their awesome job. For say, when you are writing on photography, you can give link back to some of the most famous photography sites of all time and believe me this is not going to hurt your website in one way or the other.
Do Not Beat Your Own Drum
Killer content is what your website needs to reach out to as many visitors as possible. Now self-centered approach is going to throw a spanner in this job. People who are too much obsessive about getting links from related and relevant sites may press the writer to write only on topics closely related. Now, these types of content may be served to Google but believe me these thin and not-so-good articles are not going to help your company curry favor with the targeted readers. So, rather than getting overtly obsessive with links and all that, you should divert your attention to some areas like offering great reading experience for readers. Believe me this is going to add more value to your website in the long run.
Brand Comes first
Be a little flexible while building links for your website. You should not expect that everyone around will be going to use your targeted keywords while giving link back to your website. Well they can use whatever they feel good while linking your website and you should debar yourself from sending them a request to use a specific term. Google is smart dude and they know what your backlink profile thanks to your generous induction of Analytics Code.
Do not be shortsighted while link building. We are usually swayed by small factors like relevancy, PR, back links profile, Alexa rank etc of the site in question, but you should not overlook the potential of the website. Broaden your mind and be generous and your website will have a bigger and better online presence rather than just getting featured in the SERP.
