In former time, when you were in need of links, you would just ask a few other webmasters whether they want to exchange links with you. There is nothing bad with that, even today.
Only when it comes to SEO and the effect those so called “reciprocal links” have on your ranking… you will notice that they only have very little effect. Don’t get me wrong – having reciprocal links is much better than having no links at all! Especially when they have the right anchor text to support your keywords.
But having a one way link with the right anchor pointing to your site is much more valuable. So how do you get one-way-links(or at least semi oneway links…)?
It is easy (at least in theory 
) – you do a 3 way link exchange. But how does this work?
The easiest case is if you own more than one domain. Let’s say say you have 2 domains, mySiteA.com and mySiteB.com. Now if you found a link partner for exchanging links, you would ask him or her to give you a link from his/her domain with your anchortext to mySiteB.com in exchange for a link from you from mySiteA.com. Now what google sees is two oneway links from unrelated domains. Perfect! This I would call a semi 3way linking, as there is no third link but three domains involved. Sometimes this is also called triangular linking.
Now what is a real 3waylinks system? Easy again, you need to have three links for that. Why would you do it?
Perhaps you only have one domain, so the first solution is not possible for you. So you need to find a third person who is willing to exchange links three way linking style. Linkpartnersite1.com links to linkpartnersite2.com who again links to linkpartnersite3.com. And you already guessed it – linkpartnersite3.com links back to linkpartnersite1.com. The result for google? Three one-way links from unrelated domains. That is the whole secret.
O.k. now that you know 3 way links work, you can go and start building links, right? Yes, of course! The only problem is, it is not always too easy to find 2 other persons who are willing to exchange links in this 3 way pattern. And you have to coordinate it, because no one wants to end up with a link to a site and have nothing in exchange because the third person did not link back. So 3waylinking is not so easy to control and monitor.
Is there a solution? Something like automatic link building? Yes of course there is – if you followed my site for a while then you already know the solution, it is called 3waylinks.net and provides a fully automated way to get onewaylinks three way style. And not only a few but a whopping 250 links with your chosen anchor text. Will that help improve your ranking? Believe me, it does! (It helps big time!) And it is a simple way to implement automated link building…
Perfect!! way to get one way links. I really appreciate the way you have mentioned with examples. I am really a big fan of your seo blogs and tips.
Hi “70-620″
This is a rather seldom name that I have never heard before
Thank you for your kind words, I appreciate it.
Mike
PS: This is a KeywordLuv blog, here is explained how you can use your real name and benefit for your chosen Keywords at the same time:
http://www.seo-traffic-guide.de/2008/09/27/how-does-keywordluv-work/
Like this post on three way linking. I never understood it before. It makes sense now. But is it still working like that? If so I will try it. Thanks.
Thanks for explaining 3 way links to us. Good stuff. Now off to create more quality links.
VF
Hallo,
nette Idee. Werd ich evtl. mal ausprobieren.
Liebe Grüße und einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr
Ray
3waylinks a great strategy in inreasing your backlinks and thus incresing your PR. Well explained, but you might want to change the direction of the arrows. In your second diagram you say”Linkpartnersite1.com links to linkpartnersite2.com” and the arrow is pointing to linkpartnerssite3.com. My two cents but excellent infromation and thank you.
You are right! I did not notice up to now that text and picture were not absolutely consistent… I will change it as soon as I find some time…
It’s a good idea but don’t you think that at some point the major search engines will start tracking 3 way linking methods and slap them in the same way they did with reciprocal links?
Hi James
You never know … I am having great success with this now and there are currently no signs that this is going to change soon. If it does…well we have to stay informed and adapt, the Internet is a fast evolving place…
Mike
I heard a lot about three way links but are they not going to be penalized by Big G?
I would love to have this but jsut curious and want to know if i need to do some little
stuffs to hide where this stuffs or links are coming from. I mean would the search e
engines know where they are coming from? Because if Big G know that this are coming
from one IP address it might have some ramifications.
I would appreciate if someone have an idea about this.
Thanks
Lorenz
@Lorenz: You never know what Google will do in the future, but right now it doesn’t look like Google is going to penalize 3waylinks.
I had great success in the past with it and I still use it for every new site I build – I wouldn’t do that if I did not trust in the ranking boosting abilities for the future.
There are a few measures taken by Jon Leger to ensure proper linkbuilding (Natural link growth, etc…) The only thing I would not recommend is doing nothing else but 3waylinks. As long as you use other linkbuilding methods, too, I can only recommend it!
Mike
This is a great strategy. I am success with this right now, with my site.
I am limited time, i work 12 hour a day, and this sistem it is perfect for me.
Good for SEO. I have already succes with 3 way link. Recommend
From Romania. Work in Italy.
Tanti auguri con il vostro site.
hi
good way of presenting 3 way links.
I’ve heard of three way links, but have never seen it explained and laid out in such detail!
Thank you for taking the time to share it with us.
Great solution for improve your linking with other websites.
The links that point to your website should be from related websites and from sources that would “naturally” link to you, i.e. Internet directories, social bookmarking services, blogs, etc. The more related websites link to your site, the higher your website will rank on Google’s result pages. 3 Way Link is great solution for increase your related link. But not for new website. Here is explained:
Warming: Google’s sandbox filter is still alive! How does Google’s sandbox filter work?
The usual process is that Google indexes a new website, lists it for some less important queries in the search results and then the web pages drop from the search engine result pages for several months.
Although other search engines work fine, Google doesn’t list the web site, sometimes not even for the company name. In general, brand-new web sites with new domain names need about 6-8 months to get top rankings on Google.
A great solution is this solution for increase your linkink, but not for new web sites. Personaly i have many webmasters observe its effects.
Have a great day!
From Romania. Work in Italy.
I have often used it for brand new websites with great success. The sandbox is a very individual thing and it has nothing to do with 3 way linking…
Are agree with you that 3 Way link has nothing to do with Sandbox.
But if you have a new website or if you made major changes on your website then Google’s sandbox filter might be the reason why your website’s rankings have dropped.
I have 2 web sites dropped for this reason. From the 15, 28, 32 and 36 position for the principaly keyword, now i have just ‘Not Found’… For 12 keywords. And for 2 Keywords, now i have 272 and 374 position from my statistics on Search.
I use one program for verify this ranking on all network search.
My website has good rankings in Yahoo and MSN/Live but not in Google.
… Why does Google use the sandbox filter?
It’s likely that Google delays the inclusion of brand-new web sites to encourage webmasters to build content instead of building mini-networks.
Some webmasters try to artificially inflate the link popularity of their web site by creating a network of small web sites with different URLs that all link to each other. Many of these web sites have no purpose other than linking to the main web site.
By delaying the ranking of new web sites, this mini-network strategy doesn’t offer a quick jump to the top anymore. The delay might encourage webmasters to focus on the content of their main web site instead of building useless mini sites.
Now i have 14 web sites and 2 website has been put into Google’s sandbox.
My conclusion is 3 Way link is a great strategy, with this sistem will get better rankings than before as soon as it is out of the sandbox.
Excuse me, but i don’t speak good english. I live in Italy and come from Romania.
I have great risult after 1 year of study on network. Still working 12 hours a day at work and stay home at night until 2 in front of computer.
I am a big fan of your seo blogs and tips.
Have a great day!
From Romania.
Hi Jozel
Maybe you are interested in the following article: http://thekeywordacademy.com/what-to-do-when-your-site-gets-sandboxed/
Hi Michael!
Thanks for great information! Already i use Unique Article Wizard.
Mike,
very nice blog and ideas about link building. I also appreciate the help in finding do-follow blogs.
Thanks for sharing, it sparks some great ideas!
wow very cool i never quite understand how the 3 way links work but by reading your post i truly learned a lot and especially like the fact that you didn’t just write content about it but that you also provided illustrations or diagrams on how the process works which i thought was great
thanks for sharing your ideas they seems like it can really benefit my linking process which would be excellent
I have had success before with 3 & 4 way linking – but you are right, the problem is finding good link partners. I’ll check out your suggested site to see if that helps.
The thing I don’t understand is whether there is a limit to the number of links you end up giving, and therefore getting. Most blogs only have about 15 blogroll links, any more and it would surely fail an eyeball test. Have you had any problems with this?
Hi “Credit Repair” (Why not use the keywordLuv function…?)
I assume you are talking of the automatic service? The links are put on a separate page with a pagination function when there are more links than fit on one page, so there is nowthing to worry there. If you do it manually, you will have to find a place for your links (could be the blogroll, with the problem you described, or could be an in text link in one of your articles…)
Hope that helped clarifying a bit…
Mike
Awesome tips on 3 ways link building.
i certainly agree as they seem very helpful
Thanks for the explanation.
I always wanted to know 3 way linking. Thanks for sharing.
That seems like such an obvious thing but I had never thought of it. Is it ok to do three way links between sites that you own? As long as they are on different servers? Anyway, thanks for the article, I’m going to check out a few of these.
Amy:
Yes of course it is o.k. to use the 3 way linking schemes with your own sites. Different IP adresses helps, especially when they are from different class C nets.
Mike
Thank you very much, I just set up my first 3 way link. WIth hopefully many more too come.
I have heard that google can now recognize 3 way links?
Is it true?
The question is not do they recognise it, but does it still work?
I can only say that both the newer domains I put in the system and the older ones that I had in the system from the very beginning of 3waylinks still rank very good – I could not observe any harmful effect.
So as long as you build useful sites for your users you are on the safe side and 3waylinks will still boost your rankings.
I had never considered doing a 3 way link, that is such a good idea, any other tips you can offer?
Hi Suze
I offer plenty of other tips, just browse around my blog…and if you even want more, subscribe to my newsletter – I share some tips I don’t make public for the readers of my newsletter…
Very ingenius way of making links! Never thought of it before! Thanks for the information!
3 ways links sometimes become not effective since the partner that have 2 website sometimes use dummy website to link to their partners. This dummy website is sometimes is not maintain well.
Hi Ruri
It is only important that all sites in this game are indexed. If you do a manual 3waylink scheme you should definitely check out all partners.
if you do it automatic with 3waylinks there are means built in the system to ensure it.
Usually this is nothing to worry, if if you do it manually as the links the partners provide will usally lead to the site getting indexed…
Mike
Thank Michael for explaining the great strategy is such simple terms! I am gonna try this right now, with my paid surveys site!
I have heard others talk about 3waylinks before but I didn’t fully understand it until you explained it. Thanks for the clarification.
Hello Micheal,
Basically 3 way links are what the people now making.
Offering a strong pagerank link to other, while request a link to a non pagerank domain.
Its very very important that we should not close the loop by linking between C and A. Search engines easily sees them and once busted all our efforts will end up in vain. Nowadays people say that 3 way and reciprocal are something which has no importance. I dont agree with them. as far as seo is concerned bit of everything counts and no matter from where the link comes its still a link.
Just curious…
Do you allow variations with the keywords between the 3 way links? If all of the sudden I added 250 links, all with the exact same anchor text, I am afraid that might send up a red flag with the search engines.
Also, can you throttle the speed at which the links occur? Maybe adding 10 a week over several weeks? I think that would be a great way to prevent the search engines from thinking you are gaming the system.
Your thoughts?
Ed
Hi Ed
First of all – 3waylinks is not my own service. Jon Leger is the guy who is running this excellent service.
Both of your concerns are adressed in the system: There is a throttle that makes your links grow naturally and there is link text variation so the “Over-Optimizing-Red-Flag” is circumvented.
Hope that answers your questions
Mike
Hey Michael, Can I use 3 way links on free hosted blogs like blogger and wordpress because I’m just trying to do link building on a free blog because I would like to practice 1st before doing any major moves?
Sorry, no that is not possible – you need to have your own domain.
excessive reciprocal links are not part of a good seo strategy. They should be very minimal otherwise google is going to dislike your website. One way links are natural in the eyes of search engines. If you have couple of quality sites then you can easily get one way links by doing the 3way linking strategy. Thanks to michael for explaining this crystal clear.
Real Useful post. I would thank you many times as i have 3 differnt sites but one site is the main or it plays the central one. It will definitely help me .
I am usually do this trick to made my website rank well. But remember to keep doing one way link to each website and don’t do reciprocal link
Hi Michael,
I just sent you a message via Contact Page. Your answer would be really helpful..
Thanks for your time !
Regards,
Wan
Hi Wan
I just sent you an answer
Mike
It is extremely hard to find a 3-way link system. I am always afraid that Google will catch on and penalize my sites for doing it.