The World Wide Web makes the world not so big after all and it’s even made smaller through links. These links, when clicked directs the person to the website whose URL is linked. Oftentimes, these links are used to show appreciation for an interesting site, to advertise and gain popularity or to improve a site’s ranking in search engines. There are three kinds of links: they can be one-way, two-way and three-way Links. One-way links are, as the name connotes, unilateral links. This is a situation wherein a certain website puts a link directing someone to your site although your site does not contain a link that directs a person to that site. In other words, one-way links “do not return the favor” of having more visitors due to the other site’s link. They propel an influential significance to the search engines. It sort of hints that your website is so helpful, appealing or functional that other websites desire to let other people know about it.

A link exchange that is probably most commonly used at present is two-way linking. This type of linking is bilateral in nature. They are also known as “link swaps”, “link exchanges” and “link partners”. This is where mutualism is seen. This demonstrates the “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” attitude. The links are mutually beneficial to the two websites because they both contain links directing the viewers to each other. Oftentimes, webmasters resort to two-way linking through matching sites. These are sites that are somewhat similar to the nature of your own site. This is because chances are, you both have the same target market. How? Initiate it. Place a link on your site that directs to the other site and contact the other site’s owner to inform the webmaster of what you just did. Shortly discuss the good points that you saw in their site that prompted you to link their site to yours and discreetly suggest that you will appreciate a “link back”. You may also want to think about paying for link ads on other sites. Be as creative as possible. It definitely will be worth it.

Lastly, three-way linking is a unique kind of reciprocal linking. This link building method’s purpose is to generate more “normal” links for search engines. These three-way links are deemed superior to two-way links. A three-way link is a kind of reciprocal link exchange that happens between three domains instead of two. To demonstrate, supposing site Earth links to site Venus, but Venus does not link to Earth. Therefore, site Venus is only receiving a one-way link from site Earth and NOT linking back to it. Similarly, site Mars and site Earth are linked from one site but not linking back. Instead, site Mars and Earth are linking reciprocally to diverse domains. Through this method, search engines find it more difficult to distinguish your linking strategy because this pattern is common in a number of websites in the Internet. Link exchanges can go as far as four-way or even five-way.