Link Exchanges Black Hat?

By Chris Crum - Mon, 11/24/2008 - 20:00

Plus, What is Microsoft Getting at?

Tamar Weinberg at Search Engine Roundtable points to a post (actually two) from the Microsoft Office Live Small Business Blog, where Senior Product Manager Skip Chilcott talks about link exchanges as a "popular way to generate more links." Tamar then talks about a blogger who called them on this, and refers to link exchanges as "Black Hat SEO."

Now Tamar's post seems to be more aimed at how out of touch Microsoft is when it comes to search (and while that is probably a subject worth talking about too), I want to look more at the Link exchanges as Black Hat SEO side of the coin.

What is Black Hat SEO to you?

To Google, I would certainly say paid links are up there (more on that debate here). The entry for "Black Hat SEO" on Wikipedia redirects to "Spamdexing" and talks about things like:

- Keyword Stuffing
- Hidden Text
- Meta Tag Stuffing
- Doorway pages
- Scraper Sites
- Link Farms
- Spam blogs
- Page Hijacking
- Buying Expired Domains
- Cookie Stuffing
- Blog/comment/wiki spam
- Mirror sites
- URL redirection
- Cloaking, etc.

Does the simple exchange of links between peers really belong on this list? It may not have as much of an effect on your rankings as it once did anyway, but I think I'm gong to have to go with Tamar on dubbing link exchanges as black hat being a little overboard.

"The idea that it's 'black hat' might be a stretch; link exchanges themselves are sketchy," writes Tamar. "Most would consider black hat SEO to be a lot worse than a simple link exchange that thousands of webmasters do daily."

I'm not sure how much it's going to matter if all this talk about search results going more personalization-based comes to fruition anyway. This is after all, a strategy that should eliminate the benefits of a lot of "black hat" methods anyway.

News Tags: SEO, link exchanges, Microsoft, black hat seo, search engine optimization

About the author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

13 Comments

By Used Mercury (WPN reader) - Fri, 04/24/2009 - 16:10

Why do you think Microsoft

Why do you think Microsoft would write such an article? Microsoft is Google’s competitor an it’s obvious that they want to sway people from working with Google and by creating new assumption they will get marketers to question their methods.

By Canada Bodybuilding (WPN reader) - Fri, 04/17/2009 - 01:13

Blackhat? I think not.

How could it possibly considered blackhat? you can't control what sites link to yours. imo it just doesn't look right in that list you posted, its like apples and oranges.

Regards

Nick
Whey Protein Canada

By seo service (WPN reader) - Thu, 02/05/2009 - 04:42

Link Exchanges Are Devalued

I think excessive link exchanges do belong on the black hat list - but maybe no your average link exchange. Although I don't agree in link exchanges as being that valuable, I've even wrote a post on how devalued they are (Why Link Exchanges Are Devalued).

By web design company (WPN reader) - Mon, 01/05/2009 - 00:54

Link exchanging is not

Link exchanging is not illegal, google encourages many methods of optimization that some SEO poeple say are bad. If google is telling you to do it how is it Black hat?

By Jack Clarke (WPN reader) - Sat, 01/03/2009 - 21:00

Definitely not Black Hat

If that was the case 90% of web sites would be involved. How many sites do you know that don't have outgoing and incoming links whether exchanged or not.

By SEO Company (WPN reader) - Wed, 11/26/2008 - 21:38

Intention

Reciprocal link building is all about intention, and it is very easy to see and find websites that use it to try and manipulate the SERPs, and those that have nothing to hide and display for the visitor.

In general, solid quality links help, regardless of whether they are reciprocated. Focus on the user.

By RealStudio Webdesign (WPN reader) - Mon, 11/24/2008 - 11:29

Whtie Link Exchange ?!

It's impossible to put link exchange on the black list since it's something that people usually do even without thinking about PR. bloggers link each other, business partners also do, not to mention the case where an event has sponsors - it's normal to have them linked. so this would really be a stretch if it wore to be called "black hat seo"

By why does my computer freeze (WPN reader) - Mon, 11/24/2008 - 00:26

There seems to be a double

There seems to be a double standard here. When smaller websites perform link exchanges, they are "black hat". Yet some larger, superauthority websites exchange links but they are not penalized. What gives?

By Internet Marketing & SEO (WPN reader) - Sun, 11/23/2008 - 13:53

link exchanges black hat

Don't be silly. IAC own a ton of internet properties like insiderpages and they all link to each other, because it's part of their portfolio.

By RedEvo (WPN reader) - Sun, 11/23/2008 - 12:06

Link exchange can be black hat

A link that adds no value to the page user, links to information totally unrelated to itself, is there purely to get the link count up or to seek out link juice and is based not onb merit but on a simple agreement that if I link to you you link to me is pure black hat.

By Asif Anwar (WPN reader) - Sat, 11/22/2008 - 06:47

Transparent Hat

I also think that Link Exchange is not a Black Hat. If Google tells you not to buy links, then what would you do? If you aren't buying or selling links with monetary value, then all you can do is exchange. We have Black Hat, Grey Hat, and White Hat. But, there should also be "Transparent Hat" that is thought to be an SEO Techniuqe, but useless now (or Old School SEO). e.g. Getting links from irrelevant site, meta keyword based SEO, and now reciprocal linking. Search engines will not penalize you for those actions now, but they will not give you any marketing value. Any artificial boosting technique that is not worth trying should be Transperant Hat, not Black Hat at least. But, I think Skip's article would have been relevant if it published in 2005-2006. Where was he all these years?

By SEO Melbourne (WPN reader) - Fri, 11/21/2008 - 20:32

Link exchange is Black hat?

Link exchange is Black hat? I don’t think so.

If Link exchange is Black hat than all Government website are participating in this so called SEO black hat method.
Link exchange is part of link building which Google encourages. The whole thing about link exchange is to build the organizations reputation, network and brand. Yes there is the added bonus of getting a very good backlink but calling this black hat is going against Google’s own recommendations of getting good back links.

Why do you think Microsoft would write such an article? Microsoft is Google’s competitor an it’s obvious that they want to sway people from working with Google and by creating new assumption they will get marketers to question their methods.