Most people involved in search engine optimization know that building high quality links is vital to getting ranking high in the search engines, especially the Google search engine. But many people do not go about building and exchanging links properly and it actually ends up hurting the site.

Here are 5 tips to remember the next time you are exchanging links with another website.

First of all make sure that the link is relative to the content of your website. If you site is about pets, don't have link pointing to a site about remote control cars.

Second, make sure that the site you are linking to is of high quality. If you link to a poor site, it can only hurt your site.

Third, make sure that the website you are linking to is not involved in any link schemes.

Fourth, spread your links around, and don't put them all on the same page, otherwise it could look like a link farm. At most, limit your links to 50 per pages.

Fifth, be sure to spread your link building activities out over time. It will look more natural for the search engines.

If you follow these five tips for building quality link exchanges your rankings in the search engines should rise steadily. Its always tempting to join a link farm to build links faster, but don't do it, as it often only results in poorer search rankings. Besides most of the sites in link farms tend to be of low quality.