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9 Replies Last post: Jan 31, 2008 3:13 PM by CorpCons08

Reciprocal Linking on a web-site.

Mar 19, 2008 2:33 PM

Click to view designer's profile Mogul designer 329 posts since
Feb 28, 2008
Hello, I read on a thread: "Never engage in reciprocal linking. Trust me on this one. DON"T"

Can someone please educate me why this is not a good idea on a website or if you agree with this statement? I was always under the impression that if you have a Links page and you feature some of your favorite links and those links link just happen to link back to you, it supposedly helps to raise your site higher in the Google ranking. Please do tell! Thank you.
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Click to view lowdose's profile Authority lowdose 11 posts since
Feb 19, 2008
1. Re: Reciprocal Linking on a web-site. Mar 19, 2008 2:46 PM
in response to: designer
I think the issue is that you may not agree with everything a website says that you reciprocate with. Imagine if you had an ethics website and you swapped links with Eliot Spitzer... Watching after these fubars is potentially time consuming. However, I wouldn't go so far as to ditch the practice all together. It's still an excellent way to raise your site's profile. I would avoid blogs, however, which are more subject to the whims of their authors.
Click to view LUCKIEST's profile SCORE LUCKIEST 7,938 posts since
Aug 6, 2007
2. Re: Reciprocal Linking on a web-site. Mar 19, 2008 5:38 PM
in response to: designer
Reciprocal Linking on a web-site

A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. Example: Alice and Bob have websites. If Bob's website links to Alice's website, and Alice's website links to Bob's website, the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories, in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines.
Reciprocal linking between websites is an important part of the search
engine optimization process because
Google uses link popularity
algorithms (defined as the number of links that led to a particular
page and the
anchor text of the link) to rank websites for relevancy.

LUCKIEST
Click to view websolutions's profile Mogul websolutions 191 posts since
Feb 4, 2008
3. Re: Reciprocal Linking on a web-site. Mar 19, 2008 6:51 PM
in response to: designer
the person who said that must be an idiot--you should engage is reciprocal linking and linking period. I won't go into details but I recommend it, there is nothing Black Hat or Unethical about it, as long as it is relevant and not spamm.

Best,

Mike
Click to view NatOnline's profile Mogul NatOnline 670 posts since
Oct 10, 2007
4. Re: Reciprocal Linking on a web-site. Mar 19, 2008 9:13 PM
in response to: designer
Well, if you want my opinion, I would say take extra care when linking reciprocal. A lot webmasters ask me to do that and most of the time I refused.

Do to that properly, a reciprocal link must be related to your site, Google says not more than 100 links on the page (I will say 50 max to be safe).

Do not link to site with links farm, doorway pages, etc...because these links will get you in trouble with search engines.

Check the site before linking with this kind of tool: bad-neighborhood.com so you can quickly know if the other site is in bad neighborhood.

Remember, the most powerful is a "one way link".

Good luck
Click to view blitzlocal's profile Mogul blitzlocal 92 posts since
Mar 20, 2008
5. Re: Reciprocal Linking on a web-site. Mar 20, 2008 11:41 PM
in response to: NatOnline
Hey Designer,

NatOnline is right. I worked at Yahoo! until just recently and Search Engine Optimization is what we do. Thoughtful reciprocal links from sites that are relevant won't hurt you. However, they won't help as much as one-way links from sites that have high Google PageRank. There is no shortcut-- don't buy link spamming software or listen to claims about instant #1 rankings from using some automated tool. Search engines can catch those tricks. Yes, we can name a few tools and services that sort of work, but they inevitably get shut down.

And if you are trading links, try to get them into the body of some content, so the search engine can determine the theme. Plus, use good anchor text-- in other words, not "click here". If your business is relevant to the content on that page, you won't be hit with a penalty.

But no tricks. Even stuff like 3 way linking is easy to catch (A>B, B>C, C>A). Unless you are a spammer or playing in real estate (or another ultra competitive category), it's not necessary to do black hat stuff like cloaking. It's easy to rank for local terms and do local advertising--- geo-modified terms such as "denver plumber"-- since you're not competing against many other companies.

Dennis
Click to view Biz Online's profile Mogul Biz Online 71 posts since
Oct 10, 2007
6. Re: Reciprocal Linking on a web-site. Mar 24, 2008 6:29 PM
in response to: websolutions
I agree with Mike (websolutions). Whoever said that clearly doesn't understand links.
Reciprocals can be used, it's just so many people got burned early that they didn't understand the rules.

For instance, I have multiple websites. One of my sites has several reciprocal links, but the links are on different pages of my site, not just one long link page. By employing a "less is more" link strategy on a web page, use very few outbound links that are within the same vertical / topic. And a must, use quality keyword anchor text, not just linktoothersite.com. In particular, all links coming into your site should also use quality anchor text - and mix it up, don't just rubber stamp the same anchor text on multiple sites. Can you say semantic indexing? Look it up....
Cliff Koraska
Click to view NatOnline's profile Mogul NatOnline 670 posts since
Oct 10, 2007
7. Re: Reciprocal Linking on a web-site. Mar 24, 2008 10:08 PM
in response to: blitzlocal
I agree with you blitzlocal no tricks will keep your site in good standing for a long time.
Click to view NatOnline's profile Mogul NatOnline 670 posts since
Oct 10, 2007
8. Re: Reciprocal Linking on a web-site. Mar 24, 2008 10:13 PM
in response to: Biz Online
Semantic indexing, contextual links, LSI (Latent semantic analysis) are fine with me, but it is still artificial compare to a real human being.
Click to view Mongoose's profile Mogul Mongoose 270 posts since
Nov 2, 2008
9. Re: Reciprocal Linking on a web-site. Nov 3, 2008 3:50 AM
in response to: blitzlocal
Link exchanges with relevent sites to your content will not hurt your ranking, it's good for building a good network of links to your website. As Blitzlocal said, however, "Link bombing" will get you nowhere fast, as most of the this is just flooding a ton of B.S. websites with mixed up content. Play by the rules and build a solid network, not a house of cards.

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