Reciprocal Link Pages

[Shippi]

How would you suggest setting up a reciprocal link site? Is there a specific program you recommend?
Also, what happens to a reciprocal link page if I were to switch from Monstercommerce to a different shopping cart? Would I be able to move all my links to a new platform?

[Quadrille]

I'd strongly advise you not to.

The days when reciprocal link sites did you any favours are long gone; and in many cases, a pattern of reciprocal linking can destroy a site's Google rankings.

[derekwong28]

I agree with this. Matt Cutt states explicitly how outbound links to unrelated websites can damage you.

[mattcutts.com...]

[Shippi]

Then how would you suggest getting linked to other sites?

[Shippi]

I agree, linking out to non-related sites would be harmful to my site. But, what if i had a recropical linking page/directory that only link to very relevant sites that were established (have page rank). Will this also hurt me?

[Quadrille]

The best test is "Is this link useful to my visitors?" - if you can genuinely say yes, then you'll usually be OK.

You still need to evaluate the quality of the site you link with in SEO terms; it may have good content and a heart of gold, but use known spammy methods - for example, it may be part of a comples link exchange scheme; linking with it, even without 'joining the scheme' makes you a part of it in Google's eyes.

People have proposed ever more mind-bogglingly complex schemes of interlinking, which (surprise, surprise!) Google has seen through in nanoseconds.

Motto of the Month is "Be Sure"; reciprocal links are rarely a good idea these days.

[minnapple]

Before you do any recips . . .

Paste the url of the page that will include your inbound link into the google search bar to see if it is in the live index.

Big daddy has decided to NOT include some types of pages in their search index, and certain link exchange pages have fallen in the "exclude" category.

Easy algo change for Google since most recip pages have many outbounds and few to no inbounds.

[ispy]

If your using any type of automated program or service to generate or maintain the links page Google will probably penalize or blacklist you. I don't believe it matters if the links are relevant or not. Google is on a seek and destroy mission against automatic links and the sites which use them, or are unfortunate enough to be included in their listings whether you know it or not. They are a direct threat to Googles pagerank system which measures link popularity which they use to rank pages in their directory. They don't care if you are using the linking programs as a valid way of generating website traffic or of contributing to your site, and not as some sort of cheat on link popularity. If you manually add the links and just make your own links page you will be OK.