After a client of ours got a email similar to this
I would like to do three way link exchange with your website. Your website and my website theme are same only locations are different, so if we do link exchange we can help together. Reply me soon! My website is targeting the keyword [removed] You can send a message back to this person by replying to this email.
Which naturally made them curious and promoted them to ask us
Can you explain to me what a three way exchange is and if it’s beneficial?
To which our answer was:
Unsolicited 3 way link exchanges from random spammers (especially ones using a free email account) should be ignored, link exchanges have become less and less important for SEO and now may simply harm your websites’ SEO. We have loads of ideas / ways to improve the SEO (website ranking / visitor numbers) of your site and happy to chat about this further. Therefore ignore all these link exchange requests.
There are no shortcuts to improve your website and swapping links with unknown websites could indeed harm your website health and should be avoided at all costs.