Backlinking, which is commonly referred to as "Link Building" is a major piece of any SEO strategy.

Google's PageRank metric is largely based on the number of inbound links or backlinks.

There are 3 main common scenarios for link exchanges these days:

1. Site A links to Site B and that's it. This is called a one-way link.

2. Site A links to Site B and vice versa. This is called a reciprocal link.

3. Site A links to site B, site B links to site C, site C links to site A. This is called a three-way link exchange.

Ok, first of all, I'm not going to promote any tools, or link exchanges, or "get a 1000 links fast" type of programs. The fact is that the content and relevancy of the origination page and the destination page are becoming more and more important. Which means that signing up for a program where you get 1,000 inbound links from various sites may be valuable right here and now, but that IS going to change.

There is a second value in links. Google's metric, PageRank, is a value they assign (0-10, 10 being the best) to sites that they feel are valuable. A large part of this judgement is based on the amount of inbound links to any given page. Links themselves, in the world of Google, pass PageRank. So, if site A has a PageRank of 4 and links to Site B who has a PageRank of 2, a small fraction of Site A's PR4 will pass to Site B. It is very small, but some is passed. This is a very important note. This is why inbound links are critical to any SEO strategy. The higher your PageRank (PR from now on), the easier it is for you to place in the Search Engine Organic Results of Google.

Since Google accounts for such a large portion of today's searches I base my techniques off of them. With Microsoft and Yahoo! going head to head and that debacle it doesn't look like Google is going to be thrown off the throne any time soon.

I don't recommend practices that are here today, gone tomorrow. I build techniques that are here today to build upon tomorrow. Understand that difference and why that is valuable.

Ok, so lets look at the three types of link exchanges:

1. One-way links.

These are usually best obtained by offering quality informative content that someone would naturally want to link to. For example, you have an online magazine article that features a company that company may want to link to that page to show their customers that they were featured for whatever reason. This is the best link because you don't have to do anything only the other person does who wants to link to you. These are the hardest to get because it can be obviously challenging to convince someone to link to you without exchanging the favor, but you can be creative here to intice others to do so.

2. Two-Way or Reciprocal links.

These have gone back and forth as to their value. This is mainly caused by the "link farms" and webmasters creating huge "Link Pages" on their websites. So, it's had it's fair share of abuse over the past years. For this reason their value has greatly diminished, but not all together squashed. There are some key strategies to help you get the most out of these links.

These pointers mainly fall into the realm of placement on the page, context and content relevancy. For example, "gutter links" which are links at the top in your header area or your page footer or in link-only pages for example have less value. Links in paragraphs and amongst text have a higher value. While you may not be able to communicate this to the person linking to you, you can take advantage of this has you link to other pages or websites of your own to make the most of these links.

So why does content relevancy matter? Well, the search engine analytics want to know that there's a good reason for this link to exist. Search Engines aren't about making you money, they're about giving the best results to their users. So we need to fit our strategy naturally into this model. When 2-way links were being (and still are) abused to no end they started to drastically lose their value. It was dictated basically that if you link to someone and they link back both links cancel each other out if there is no content relevancy or other quality connetion. So, keeping good anchor text (display text), good page placement, good content proximity (how close the link is to good TEXT content), etc help retain the value of BOTH links without either being essentially canceled out. For this reason this next type of link exchange was born to get around the content relevancy factor as we'll see.

3. Three-way link exchanges

Ok, so if Site A links to Site B that's a one way right? Yes.

Now, Site B Links to another Site C and that's a one was link right? Yes.

Finally, Site C links back to Site A creating a 3rd one-way link right? Yes.

Notice there is no connection between Site A and Site B? Ahhh! Genius right?!

WRONG!

Not so fast, this was actually a pretty good trick until recently. Basically what this did is allow any two sites to exchange links via a "link launder" site that "cleaned" the link of any connection. Since they weren't linking directly together as is with a reciprocal (2-way link) there was no way of identifying the origination site and the destination site, leaving only the one-way link between Site A and Site C.

Well that was good for, again trying to pull one over on the user thus presenting inferior content to the user. What does this do? Well, yes it drives traffic, but if I own a drive through do I want a 100 people in the drive through with no one buying or do I want 2 people in the drive through both of which make purchases?

Now Google is starting to map these 3-way link exchanges to expose what's really going on and penalizing or discounting the link. So, in the end this practice will become another fad as far as ways to abuse the system.

However, if you do generally find a good reason to do this or if you own multiple sites you can take advantage of this as long as you stick to the same strategies that we use for the 2-way links. That is, stick to good content relevancy between sites, good link placement on page and in content proximity.

Ok, so now you're saying, well that was a lot of good info, but how do I go about getting these links?

Well , one of the easiest ways is to find out who is linking already in the first place. It may be daunting to just pull up a chair to the PC and think to yourself, "Who am I going to get to link to me?" without having any real plan...

A good first place to start would be using the backlink tool in Yahoo!. Find one of your competitor's sites that has lots of backlinks, which you can find out via entering into Yahoo's search "link:www.yoursite.com" and it will return all the inbound links to that site. Enter your competitor's site and see who links to them. Contact those sites because you already know they're open to linking and figure out a way to convince them that your link is better than your competitors.

Another good way is to network online like you would in the real world. Keep in touch with your peers online or other business owners, or bloggers, or hubbers, etc. Keep a list of emails that you can regularly send out notices to when you get new content posted up.

Using social networking like HubPages and others are great places to expand your online footprint and offer hooks to your other websites.

Finally, make it easy and worthwhile for someone to want to link to you or to foster link exchanges. Create a quick link exchange request form to make it quick and easy for someone to request a link and vice versa.

Some General Principles and Ideas to help you understand the premis of quality link building

Realize that high volume traffic that isn't qualified is good for only one thing, stastical averages. If you're getting 10,000 visitors, but only 2% actually buy that's not so great resulting in 200 sales.

If you focus your efforts to get your links in more qualified areas that actually matter and present value to the user... It may be a bit more time consuming, a little harder, and resulting in less traffic generally BUT...

If you only get 1000 users worth of traffic, but 1/2 those people buy because you've targeted all your effors so that you know the only reason why they would come to your site is because they're looking for what you offer... Well, that's golden right there. Then it's just a matter of tweaking whatever the reason is why those that left without purchasing.

Again, I don't support using link exchange programs because you're relying on that stastical average of thinking that you'll eventually get those that you just happen to hit and the right time and right place...

Instead, think of working in a way that you know will produce the results you want. Sure you can't pay some website for 1,000 links of this quality, but at least you know that you're links that you've produced are of high quality, present a value to the user/visitor and are part of a strategy that won't be phased out after a search engine figures out the tactic of abuse.

So, in a nutshell...

Focus on obtaining 1-way links via offering high quality informative content that aids users and visitors giving them a reason to want to link to it.

2-way or reciprocal links are good, but only if you follow the strategy of good on-page placement. good proximity to textual content and content relevancy of destination and origination pages.

3-way link exchanges is a tactic of abuse to produce the same results of when 2-way link exchanges could be abused. Now that the abuse of 2-way link exchanges has run so rampant that their value has dimished this 3-way link exchange has risen up to take it's place so that people can cut corners once again.

Finally, just remember that tactics of abuse will eventually be taken out and discovered for what they are. Search Engines make more money via AdWords and paid search when the user actually clicks through and gains value. Pulling one over on the Search Engines to present results that the user doesn't actually want results in less action for the Search Engines in most cases. Keep that in mind when determining your long term SEO strategy.

I'm sure that many would disagree as these abuse tactics are the basis of many of today's get rich quick online schemes, but so be it. I've been in this game for nearly 10 years. These aren't opinions, these are results of split testing and other true internet marketing experts' testing as well.