jmpruitt
Posts: 3918
Joined: 19 Jun 09
Trust:
22 Aug 11 8:12 pm
Link exchanges are pretty worthless unless they are sending you direct traffic, so getting link exchanges from irrelevant sites is a useless waste of time.
Google knows all about link exchanges, and they will value the reciprocal links less. they won't necessarily harm your site, but they will simply be ignored, so they won't help you any unless they give you direct results.
For example, I exchange links with other blogs within my niche all the time, but doing so, we are sending direct traffic to each other's sites. that direct traffic is worth the link, even if google doesn't count it.