Reciprocal Linking On The Way Out?

It might be true from SEO …
But it’s a bollocks strategy to follow …

I get 5,000 to 8,000 visits a day on site.
About 500-600 (10%) come from search engines.

The rest are either bookmarks or links from other sites.

I dearly hope that everyone jumps on the bandwagon and starts removing reciprocal links … all the more traffic for me …
:shhh:

simmo,

can you copy paste that article? subscription is needed to view it.

thx.

good info simmo!

after reading that article i’m not sure that reciprocal linking is on the way out. It will still be an important factor. What google is trying to do though, is discount link spamming from PR calculation which is a logical step since lately people go to mad extents to get a higher PR.

So if your site is totally crap, and you are linked from a high PR site, this might raise some flags as you’ve obviously bought that link there… my 2 cents

Nice article, but I can’t find nothing new.
Growing naturally, content, link farm avoidance.

Search engines is not a science.
Algorithms may change at any time and maybe google will be history in a cup of years as Altavista is.

Common sense is the way.
Why not a good reciprocal exchange if the partner site is good enough?

I tend to agree that I don’t see anything in the Google blog post to suggest that exchanging links between topically relevant sites is any sort of problem. Like they say, if it is something that might be of benefit to your user then go ahead and do it. One hint here is that Google most likely credits links that are clicked on by humans greater than links that are not, so if you have a link in a link directory that actually gives you some traffic, that links is valuable.

You can also do a number of searches on the web among a many different commercial themes and many of the first sites that will come up are directories. Those are nothing but links, and many of the directories require reciprocal links back.

On the paid links issue, Google and the owner of Text Link Ads both stated the same thing in different sessions of the latest SES conference. That being that high PR sites that sell links are not very valuable anymore because the PR7 or 8 they have is a big red flag to Google, especially if the site doesn’t get much traffic or have any real reason to be that high in PR. There aren’t a ton of these sites, so it’s easy for Google to manually check them out. So, if you do buy links, they both suggested going for mid-PR topically relevant sites that have some traffic. Kind of obvious if you think about it.

Also keep in mind that the Google algorithm looks for natural patterns in your backlinks, so if every link were reciprocal and had the exact same link text surrounded by the exact same description, then that will look suspicious to Google. Where the boundaries are is anyone’s guess.

So, no I don’t think reciprocal linking is dead or dying, it just has to be considered as one component of an overall linking strategy.

Reciprocal Linking is, and will continue to be devalued in the long term.

This SEO strategy, and any other non-natural link building strategy does not adhere to most major search engines terms & rules.

Many of us, including myself, have for years engaged in techniques that are not in compliance with Google’s, or other SE’s rules.

Personally, I think that reciprocol links are no longer a good viable strategy and people need to start looking at alernative link strategies to compete in this very competitive market.

Swap links to sites and exact pages that you think are relevant and of some use to somebody aside yourself.

If they won’t link you back, don’t remove the link. Soon you’ll be a hub, which is 1 step away from authority, 1 step above basic.

That way you create what Gooner is on about, whether by design or luck. Best of both worlds.

imo.

Worrying about whether or not a link to or from your site is “reciprocal” misses the whole point. You want to link to websites that are high-value and trusted, and you want high-value, trusted websites to link to your site. If you focus on that, then “reciprocal links” or not, you’ll do fine in Google.