Is it still worthwhile exchanging links?

I have been advised to try anything but links

[meeko]

Jagger update killed my site from PR5 to 0 and since then i pretty much gave up, my site dissappeared and traffic too.
Now i am re-charged and want to start again.
My failed site plan for the year before was to swap links with other sites with as similar content as possible and this seemed to work until jagger. I think i may have linked to a bad neighbourhood which kicked me out.
Now i am trying another site and was advised from another forum to avoid linking at any cost. They said directories were the way to go - however there are only so many of these and I am at a loose end.
What are your opinions, should i begin linking again but keep a closer eye on who i am linking too?
Also what about 3 way swapping - people link to my site A and i give them a link from site B so that site A has no outgoing links only incoming.

Thanks in advance for any welcoming advice.

[europeforvisitors]

Now i am trying another site and was advised from another forum to avoid linking at any cost.

That's nonsense. Linking is a fundamental building block of the Web and--just as important--the basis of Google's own PageRank formula. It's a good thing, as long as it's done for the right reasons. (That's why linking to decent content, instead of linking to any site that will exchange links with you, is the way to go.)

[ken_b]

I think i may have linked to a bad neighbourhood which kicked me out.

Links go bad all the time and some end up in bad neighborhoods. That's why it's important to review your outbounds links occasionaly to make sure you still want to link to the sites.

That said, in all the time I've been a member here I haven't seen any credible evidence that linking to one site in a bad neighborhood is likely to get you banned, penalized, or even filtered by Google, IF it's just one of many outbound links on your site.

If all you link to is bad neighborhoods, or even if only most of your links head that way, well that may be another story.

Which is why you want to be careful who you link to.

[meeko]

Thanks guys for your help.
For 3 months i have been declining link exchange requests just because i was scared it would have an effect on my other sites.

I have a resources page, when users click on it they are taken to about 8 further links related to my sites content. When one of the 8 links are clicked I have a list of other peoples links that match this subject (that are all related to my overall site content). Does this sound ok?

Am I safe with the 3 way link idea mentioned in my first post so that one site has all the attention pointing to it or would this be considered spammy?

Thanks again. Its good to get the cogs turning after being away from this so long but Jagger really put me off promoting my sites and doing anything with them