This blog post also caught my attention in term of link schemes (nice catch and good link bait was it?). Mentioning a search result from google webmaster help center. And what google don’t what and the possibility of your site getting a red flag on based on this four (4) points

* Links intended to manipulate PageRank

This was already been discussed several times on different webmasters and seo sites, google is trying to create things in such a way that their pagerank system is not being manipulated in any way. A clear intention of gaining ranking on the search engine.

* Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web

Hey, did you consider the sites, trying to destroy your site out of the competition? Why? I was in the seo contest, but even if you don’t link to this spam sites, you will just notice your site on the bad neighborhood due to the competition that opposes this guidelines. How thus google algorithm took care of this issue?

* Link exchange and reciprocal links schemes (”Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)

Was 3-way link system will do the trick? Maybe but this implies to me, is the quality of link you want to exchange. Link exchange is not bad as long as the integrity of link is there.

* Buying or selling links

Oh, another way of manipulating pagerank system and a move of google to monopolize the advertising industry. Ops, I have already mentioned it previously, buying and selling links is not an issue also if you are buying or selling links for traffic and imposing what google recommends like implementing a javascript redirect or no-follow to the link that at least will please google that you are not leaking your site pagerank.

So don’t be so threatened on that link exchange, as long as quality of link is there, you will not have problems.