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Exchanging links from a single site: good or bad?
Posted by on March 13, 2026 at 1:33 amHey everyone. I have a new-ish site that I'm currently doing SEO for. Some of our blogs are doing really well, and some of them are currently ranking on the 1st-2nd pages as well as in AI Overviews, getting good impressions and some traffic as well. I regularly do backlink outreach manually to build DR (which is fluctuating from 1 to 2 despite my acquiring a few backlinks), and recently, a site I had reached out to replied to me that they'd link to us if we linked to them in one of our blogs. They picked the blog on my website, and I picked one on theirs, and it was done. I was reached out to by them again yesterday, and they wanted a link in another one of my blogs, and they're happy to link to us in any blog of my choosing. I've read somewhere that exchanging multiple links from a single site is an indication of spam by Google, and it's generally not recommended, but I've also read that as long as the links are contextual, it's a good thing. The site in consideration is offering the same business/platform as us, so they're our lesser-known competitor in a way, and the link would make sense. Their DR and organic traffic are way more than ours, so I'm assuming they just want maximum footprint if they want a link on our blog with only some traffic. But again, it's valuable for my site as well to get a backlink, right? Should I go ahead with it?
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Good question. Unless someone’s been at the receiving end of a manual action for this I doubt anyone knows what the number is.
As a big believer in EMD/KID and brands launching satellite KID domains for SEO as well as firewalling (a single domain name strategy isn’t just risky – its costly) – I’ve had no problem sending 50 links either way without issue.
What I have noticed is that: The more links, the less the authority flow was, Again – its about manipulation – and who knows what Google’s threshold is – they’ve never stated publicly to the best of my knowledge.
>I’ve read somewhere that exchanging multiple links from a single site is an indication of spam by Google, and it’s generally not recommended
While it seems common sense to say this, we have to apply critical thinking and say that this is a guess – unless there was some kind of “peer reviewed” study of sorts. And common sense isn’t evidence – the most common default penalty that people have been claiming for 30 years is that Google doesnt like duplicate content, which has never been the case (despite some maniac going postal about it recently)
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I would make one more exchange over links that are contextual and relevant but no more, as more than one can be perceived as spam by Google, particularly to a competitor. To build DR safely, concentrate on various natural backlinks. What was your connection speed in the recent past?
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A few exchanges are okay if they’re relevant, but too many from the same site can look spammy. Focus on getting backlinks from different domains.
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