Link Exchange Pitfalls

I was approached by the marketing manager of a certain US based photography company.  In exchange for linking to their website, she would reciprocate by linking back to me from a selection of different websites.  It was a slightly strange offer so I did a bit of research.

The problem with her offer was that the selection of different websites  were clearly link farms.  If I participated in this kind of scheme, search engines like google could actually discriminate against me.

I turned down the marketing manager and would advocate that anyone with a website be selective about who they exchange links with.  More isn't always good.

Exchanges links with your friends, your colleagues, with sites that you consider have relevant or similar content, with sites that have a good PageRank.  Consider getting the Google Toolbar as this displays the PageRank of any piece of content you are looking
at.  A website falsely claiming to be important, relevant or more
visited than it actually is will soon be detected if you use this tool.

Link to sites that you consider to have great content, whether or not you are getting anything in return. 

Finally, focus on developing good content yourself and exposing that content to search engines.  Then people will find it and link to you.