1. Improve your link popularity and search rankings by trading (exchanging) links with relevant and important websites.
2. Focus on exchanging links with websites that will bring potential customers to your website.
3. Use keyword phrases text that is hyperlinked. For example: Joe’s Roofing should be hyperlinked as opposed to hyperlinking text like “click here”. This adds more value to the link. You could also hyperlink “roofing contractor.”
4. Before asking others to exchange links, ensure that your website is 100% completed. This means, no page should say “under construction.”
5. Ensure your homepage has a visible link to your Links page. In fact, make sure EVERY page on your site links in to your Links page.
6. Keep your links page limited to 10 links. If need be, I recommend only expanding up to 25. Google starts to reduce the value/weight of your links if you put too many on a page. Remember, link to only relevant sites that pertain to your industry. Quality over quantity.
7. If you have more than 5 or 6 links, try and categorize your links to help your visitors read the links easier. Maybe categorize the links by types of services offered or industries they service.
8. I am very skeptical of 99% of websites that offer link exchange services. Most are just SPAM websites. If you must use a link exchange service, make sure they offer link filtering so only relevant links appear on your website. Gotlinks.com offers such a service. (We have no affiliation with gotlinks.com)
9. “Link Exchange” is not the only method to get inbound links. Update your company profiles on all websites list your company. For example: Industry websites, contractor service directories, association directories, local directories and directories like Google’s new Google Maps Local Directory

QUESTION: How does “Link Exchange” apply to my website’s placement in Search Engines?

Exchanging links is part of the search engine optimization (SEO) puzzle. Specifically, the more inbound links you have coming to your site, the better your placement in search engines. Inbound links from highly ranked websites are weighted heavier than links from sites that are rarely visited or are ranked poorly by search engines. They also weight the inbound links depending on how relevant the linking site is to your site. Here’s a good example: You offer roofing services. A site that offers other construction related services will be weighted heavier than a crummy link exchange spam site that just lists 1,000’s of websites.

Now, go find those relative links! I recommend contractortalk.com as a good resource for other contractors looking for relative links. Good Luck!