Look for Quality Over Quantity When Link Building
Search engines are constantly introducing new and more sophisticated technology to help them produce valid results for keyword searches. In addition to search engine optimization (SEO), links can play an important role in determining a website's ranking. And, this doesn’t mean just any links. Quality links rank much higher over quantity and search engines are smart enough to know the difference.
Sites with many quality links rank higher in searches and are considered more “authoritative” than websites with highly populated links pages. For this reason, many webmasters and site owners engage in "link building" practices with the intention of gaining additional links to their website. Once a site is has reach the status of being considered an authority, the goal is reached and very little link building needs to be done from that point on. Popular websites such as target.com or walmart.com simply don’t need to pursue links as they come naturally to them.
The highest ranked websites are those that are built with natural links in mind. Building a quality site with excellent content can help turn any site into an authority over time, but that can be a difficult process. Smaller sites engage in link building simply to get their site noticed to begin with, with the intention of ultimately developing those “natural” links. Natural links are difficult to achieve and take more time to accomplish than active link building.
A proven method for link building is to find good quality sites in a compatible industry that will exchange links with your site. You link to them in exchange for a link in return. Since exchanging links is not natural linking, the value of the “exchanged” links is thought to be less than the value of a natural one-way link.
The best link exchanges are those that are more than just another link on a “links” page, but links that are built into the websites content, much as the link above is built into the content of this page
