The partner ledger

Partners lists the sites you have agreed to exchange with: "Sites you've agreed to exchange backlinks with. Ask a partner for a link any time — no new request needed."

The partners table

Each partner is one row: their domain and since when you've been partners, the status, the live links each way (such as 0 of 5 to you and 0 of 5 from you), the next step the partnership is waiting on, and their authority. Live counts only links that are on the page and checked.

Ask for a link sits on each active partner's row. The ⋯ at the end has the rest: open the partner, pause the partnership, or end it. Pausing and ending ask first. Paused and ended partners sit behind their own filters above the table.

Links between you

The ledger is laid out in two blocks, one per direction, one row per link. Links you placed for them, and links they placed for you.

Two directions rather than one merged list, because the interesting question is usually whether the relationship is balanced, and a merged list hides that.

When there is nothing yet, it says so: either of you can ask first.

The badge vocabulary

Each row carries a badge saying whose move it is and what is needed. In rough order of a link's life:

Waiting on them, they have your request and have not answered.

Accept or decline, their request is waiting on you.

Review their wording or Agree the wording, somebody has suggested different words.

Update your wording, they sent yours back.

To be placed, agreed, not yet on the page.

Add it to your page, agreed and yours to place.

Live, on the page and checked.

Re-add the link, it was live and has gone.

The badges are written from your point of view, so scanning the ledger tells you what you have to do without reading any detail.

Reading it well

Two habits.

Scan for anything phrased as an instruction to you. Those are the rows where nothing moves until you act.

Watch the balance over months rather than weeks. A partnership where you have placed five and received none is worth a conversation before it becomes a grievance.

Pausing and resuming

A partnership can be paused. While paused, neither side can ask for new links, and the page says so.

Existing links are still watched. Pausing stops new asks, not the monitoring.

Use it when you are mid-redesign, when your quality bar has changed, or when you simply need a quiet quarter. It is a lot kinder than declining every request, and it is reversible.

Ending a partnership is the permanent version.

Older exchanges

Some links, especially older ones, live in a slightly different flow with its own placement pages. Those still work and are still watched. See placements and agreements from older exchanges.

Where to go next

Asking a partner for a link is the next move once you have a partner. How Rankbench keeps watch covers what happens to a live link afterwards.