Measure effectiveness of link exchanges?

I am trying to find out what the effectiveness of my link exchanges are. Is there a way to measure the effectiveness that the link exchanges are having in where you site is placed in Google? Thanks,

Do you rank better than you did:

• a week ago?
• a month ago?
• two months ago?
• three months ago?
• ...a year ago?

If the answer is "NO" (to all) then I would suggests totally ineffective.

If your website is ranking well then it is clear of effective ness.
Links give you stability to your website.

If you get lots of traffics from the site and your target keyword increase in SERP the exchange would be effective. But if it turns out the other way the effect is negative.

Link Exchange can contribute lot of traffic to your site... if ever that your do not receive any traffic from that site, better reject it.

but is there no program that shows how google is treating your external links? I need to show my boss that the link exchanges I have been doing are paying off. He wants more than just if the site is ranking better. He wants to see if I should be spending my time on link exchanges. Any program that shows statistics?

Thanks

Honestly you need to face reality... you're wasting your time...

Link exchange does have a little value - but not in a commercial environment where your boss must have productivity... you're wasting his money on your salary "just because the links are free"... but the turnaround time for return is like 18 months... he's better to stop paying your salary, make some wise investments in link referrals and then once those links are producing roi [like in days to a few weeks] then pay you to do something a little more productive.

I respect what you have said and I know that there is controversy on this topic. I will definitely look into link referrals but I still would like to track the link exchanges I have made for the past few months and their effectiveness. Any Ideas of how I could do this?

To show your boss put all the links you have aquired into a spread sheet include the date the link was placed, the anchor text of the link, the PR of the link page. This shows your boss you are actually doing something. As for effectiveness there is only SERP improvement for targeted keywords. In my experience I find it takes about three or four months to get the full effect of new links.

A suugestion... Tell your boss your research suggests that while such scheemes do help to some degree they are not the only method you should be pursuing. Suggest some other methods to him. ie Outsource some of the link building to others. Cheap - 3 way link builders from ,low labour costy country's ($5 to $15 per link). Moderate - read the link in fathoms signature or approach some other SEO companies with a request for quote on link devlopment. Expensive - Pay people to develop your own link bait and promote that to websites.

best of luck

Well I guess that all depends on what you classify as being "effective".

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