I believe Link Exchanges still provide quality and useful back links that search engine love. There is no right or wrong way to make link exchanges, but you must follow certain guidelines that I shall explain below
In my experience I have seen big improvements in search engines rankings after getting reciprocal links from related websites.
This only applies if your website is brand new but also if you get links slowly. If you are experienced, and know how to get many link exchanges fast, then there is no need to create a highly focused directory before getting links from any category.
A link is important, so important that it does not need to be on a page with 40 other links to be considered important. All links are required, so accept a link even if there are a hundred other links on the same page.
Installing one of the free plug-ins that display links that are using no follow tags is also important. So make sure your links won't be using no follow tags.
Pay attention to three way link exchanges from certain type of sites. If you link to any site, and the web master then links to you from a directory that is no good. At least get a link from a website.
Do not link exchange with directories. They have no content and most of them have categories that relate to everything you can imagine. All links are important, but still I ignore directories, I submit my website to many directories but not to those that require a link back.
Making link exchanges with sites hosted on free web servers is not bad, however these websites usually do not last long, the web master may buy a domain and all links get lost. But it is still a link, so get it if you can.
Check their links pages, and if they have too many characters in the URL pay attention. If it is too long search engines cannot index that page and a link on the page is useless.
