Setting up your site for exchanges

Before your site can take part in exchanges, four things have to be true. The fastest way to learn them is to try to send a request with something missing, because the form lists exactly what is in the way.

The four

The site is verified. Partners only exchange with proven owners, and an unverified site is invisible in the directory. See proving your site is yours.

Backlink exchanges are on. The switch is in your site's Settings, under Backlink exchanges: Accept backlink exchanges, described as "Other sites ask for a backlink exchange. You approve every exchange." Beside it, Who can find you has to be Listed: a hidden site is out of the directory and nobody can send it a new request. Turning exchanges on from the Backlink Exchange page opens a dialog that says exactly what it does: "This adds the site to Backlink Exchange discovery. It does not publish a link or accept a request."

You have published exchange rules. A partner needs to know what you accept before they ask.

You share at least one page. A partner has to have somewhere to ask for a link. See pages you share.

The blockers

The request form checks both sides and names what is missing. The useful thing about it is that it separates what you can fix from what you cannot.

Yours to fix: the site is not verified, it is not open to backlink exchanges, it has no rules, you share no pages, or every page you share is hidden.

Theirs to fix: their site is not fully set up. The form's advice in that case is to pick a different site, because you cannot do anything about it.

Neither: the two sites belong to the same workspace, or they are the same domain. A link between two sites you own is an internal link, and search engines treat it as one, so the exchange would earn you nothing. The form says so rather than letting you waste the request.

The exchange rules

Exchange rules in the Backlink Exchange menu is where they live, laid out like Settings: the version in force, then Topics, Links, Who can ask and Notes, one rule per row.

Change rules opens the editor in a side panel, and so does Edit on the everyday rules: the topics you welcome, the industries you won't host, the link type, links per page, the partner's authority, how fast you reply, and notes for partners. In the panel you can start from Standard rules, Copy from a site, Paste my own rules or Customise. Edit on any other row, such as a partner's country or language, page types or anchor text, takes you to the site's full Backlink Exchange settings, which hold every rule. The panel links there too, as More rule settings.

Publishing makes the next version; requests already sent keep theirs. The panel closes and the page says which version is now in force. Changing rules a site already has leaves who can find it as it was; publishing a site's first rules opens it to backlink exchanges.

Your site's Settings shows both sets of rules, so they are easy to tell apart. Rules for writers, under Guest posts, is for guest posts. Rules for partners, under Backlink exchanges, is these rules, and its Edit opens the same editor.

The full settings hold what you accept: which countries and languages, minimum authority and referring domains, which page types, how many links per page, your policy on homepage and deep links, follow and sponsored attributes, minimum word count, wording rules, and how long you expect to take.

An SEO consultant can change the rules only when the site's owner lets them answer exchange requests. Otherwise they can read them, and an admin changes them.

Two notes.

Set the quality thresholds honestly rather than aspirationally. A high bar on a new site means nobody can ask you anything.

Every change to the rules creates a new version, and existing requests keep the version they acknowledged. So you can tighten your rules without changing the terms under somebody who already asked.

Checking your own work

Go to the directory and look at your own site the way a partner would. The figures shown there are the ones people judge you by, and they are the same ones in the Authority tile on your Website overview.

A site with no measurements yet says so: metrics are checked within the hour of a site being added.

Where to go next

Pages you share is the remaining prerequisite. Then finding a site to exchange with.