Hey All...

Quick Question for the link building experts.

I have used my own tried and tested methods for link building. Recently I have read conflicting reports around reciprocal links?

We all know one way themed backlinks are excellent. Backlinks from content rich pages is also excellent.

My question is - Are reciprocal links dead? Do they not provide any link boost?

Cheers

Critter

Trading links with sites that I work on is definitley giving them a link and ranking boost.

"Everything in moderation", that is what my father taught me.

Good advice for any question asked on any topic.

critter -

I like Rusty's advice, but I also recommend thinking logically about the web environment.

For almost any site on the web, a number of links are going to be reciprocal - it's perfectly natural. Most of the time these will be sites that are related somehow - the White House and Congress, Harvard & Princeton, Google & Yahoo!

There is no inherent reason why reciprocal links should be discounted, but they aren't the only piece in a naturally built site's ranking factors - when I think about the value of something I always ask myself "Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

Reciprocal linking with sites I think are valuable to my visitors or could provide my site with traffic is an easy answer...

Right now, yes, recip links certainly work. But, that doesn't mean that it will always work that way in the future. When doing link building for a site I want to be around in three years, I do what currently works as well as try to think ahead to what may work down the road and incorporate it all in.

Get the recip links and get the boost (assuming they are quality trades - be careful what you link to) but continue to work on the themed and relevant one way inbounds in an effort to get a boost for the present as well as prepare for any possible future changes. But, thats simply my opinion.

Reciprocal links are not a problem if you do it with quality sites, But search engines have complained aytomated reciprocal links destroy the whole link structure of the web, To some extent it is true, Link algorithms are written totally based on the natural web linking, The whole algorithm is manipulated by reciprocal linking,

But it is unavoidable because it has remained to be the cheapest and long standing way to get free links, I stand with Barry on this, Always stay within moderate level, Any article saying reciprocal links are dead written by an SEO or link building company can only be to stress to buy their one way link services they provide, I dont see any other motive behind this,

There are many methods of gaining links other than reciprocal links, check some really worth link building articles on the web which suggests various link building methods,

"Any article saying reciprocal links are dead written by an SEO or link building company can only be to stress to buy their one way link services they provide, I dont see any other motive behind this"

I agree with powerofeyes.


You can still benefit from reciprocal links if the links are from good content-rich and RELEVANT sites. And don't use any trick to fool the SEs and you will be rewarded.

I link to most of my clients sites and they link to me though their business has nothing to do with mine, which means that i'm doin reciprocal links with out of theme reciprocal link partners, but this has never done any harm to my site.

If it has i guess noone would dare put a porfolio page on their site.

strategicrankings,

What you say is true. But portfolio pages are so different than millions of unorganized link pages we usually see. You are reinforcing your credibility with your portfolio pages. But if I create a page where 20 pharma site wrestle with 40 cheap-hotel-booking sites and they with 30 ink-jet-printers, it does no do any good to users.

If you are providing your users with useful information, you need to organize the resource pages where theme comes. Am I wrong here?

And not all can make portfolio pages. They are industry specific. For example, if I sell black pearls online, how can I make a portfolio page?

For example, if I sell black pearls online, how can I make a portfolio page?

To continue with that example, it would be difficult. However, there are no doubt diamond only sites that would be happy to trade links, as well as gold, custom jewelry, etc

You can get reciprocals from vendors, suppliers, community organizations you belong to, and many other places that are directly related to your business.

Yes, it's hard. If it was easy then everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't be worth anything. ;) Of course, many people are doing it, but poorly and ineffectively.

I find that one key to getting good recipricals is to be proud of your recip page. Spend time designing it. Make sure it has great PR, fully spiderable links, good descriptions, is well organized, on topic, properly linked and so forth. It should be one of your best pages.

Then what will happen is that you will be very popular and excellent sites (and a lot of bad ones, too, of course) will be sending you offers to link, rather than the other way around. You can then pick and choose - choose the ones that you would be proud to show off as a linking partner and are in your industry (or nearby and related). As you do this, your recip page gets better and better, and this will in turn help your own site.

Ian