ken_b - 5:04 pm on Aug 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

When a company or person starts giving you "one size fits all" advice you might want to walk away, quickly.

That's what I'd do given the advice you recieved.

Removing on target reciprocals is probably not a good idea. For one thing they are "reciprocal", which means the sites they lead to might very well follow your lead and remove their links to your site. I doubt if that's really what you want.

It's probably true that some reciprocal linking is being devalued, but that's most likely non-relevant linking that follows aggressive patterns which can be easily spotted by the search engines.

I wouldn't be surprized if even some links developed through "apparently relevant" but VERY aggressive linking schemes were being devalued. That might be the kind where, for example, maybe 6 out of 10 widget sites all have identical sets of link partners.

On the other hand, if you have used those really aggressive linking schemes, welllll..... :)

In general the kind of advice you recieved is often based on the misintpretation or over generalzation of frequently isolated comments that are taken out of context.

I don't do much reciprocal linking, but I wouldn't refuse a good related reciprocal link deal based on anything I've read here or that I've seen the SE reps post or say anywhere I'm aware of.

You can always find a valid reason to turn down a link deal without twisting someones words so much they can't even be recognized by the original speaker.

While I don't do much planned intentional reciprocal linking I certainly have a number of reciprocals that simply resulted from natural linking. Bobs bait shop gives me a one way link because he likes my fish stories site, later I see the referer from Bobs bait shop in my log files, check out his site, think it's cool, and link to it.

Now we've both got a reciprocal link from each others site. Does anyone really believe the SEs frown on links like that?

[edited by: ken_b at 5:13 pm (utc) on Aug. 23, 2006]