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Not every ecom site is related to an area in which there are authority sites. In addition to which, links out to authority sites are highly unlikely to be reciprocated by the sites linked out to. There's a world of difference between informational and ecom sites. And also a world of difference in the motivation for linking out.
IMHO, linking to authority sites has little, if anything, to do with the concept of reciprocal linking in most cases. Where on a site links are placed, particularly reciprocal links and the *mix* of reciprocated and unreciprocated links, are probably the more critical and pertinent issues in this discussion - which is discussing the subject of reciprocal linking and whether it's being penalized or devalued.
Not every ecom site is related to an area in which there are authority sites.
ecom - sells somethings > that something must be about something > I know of no product that can sell without infomation and know of no industry that does not have a leader.
In addition to which, links out to authority sites are highly unlikely to be reciprocated by the sites linked out to.
hmmm... a link from a leader of the industry was not my reasoning - A industry leader (authority) tends to have related backlinks to that industry and those backlinks tend to suggest someone is linking out... thus within those backlinks are linking partners. There are also many regional authorities out there, city, municipal, state, region - and we all have a point-of-sale.
There's a world of difference between informational and ecom sites. And also a world of difference in the motivation for linking out.
Not really. Informative sites give away informative, knowledge, and maybe even skills and sell credibility (this would be through funding, membership fees or donations). eCom sites sell information, knowledge, skills (or products and services) and give away credibility - brochure, flyers, samples, demos, sharware, freeware, etc. in the hopes that some will buy.
You can't have a website without some form of information - a title, product picture, product description, etc., is still information.
Links are votes, they also imply partnership in some limited way - therefore if there is no partnership opportunities within your industry with informative websites, then possibly complementing industries and their informative websites is the way to go, and still the authority site (the leader of the industry) is the best place to start.
The reality - if there it no linking opportunity "at all in any industry" then other eComs in complementing industries is now your focus -- still nothing; your direct competitor must be having the same problem and another potential opportunity.
IMHO, linking to authority sites has little, if anything, to do with the concept of reciprocal linking in most cases.
Agree - never stated linking to them though - checking their backlinks gives you a diversity of choice.
Where on a site links are placed, particularly reciprocal links and the *mix* of reciprocated and unreciprocated links, are probably the more critical and pertinent issues in this discussion - which is discussing the subject of reciprocal linking and whether it's being penalized or devalued.
Penalized - not a chance - the reality of a reciprocal link is "link uniqueness" or normally a single link from one site to another. You will see crosslinking strategies being penalized (which are definitely not being penalized now, within reason) long before unique reciprocals.
Devalued - well in the greater scheme of things - as Google crawls and indexes more of the "new" web everything is less than it was before adding even one new page.
Your current position in Google's "known web" in not a constant (it flucuates with others linking or breaking, being penalized, banned and Google adding more pages thus more links that are not yours) - if there is even one site owner out their adding links more agressively, each new link is devaluating you but not because Google has really chanced a rating system for "reciprocals" -- you're simply being pushed further down in the pack.
Honestly - I have no clue if a algo chance occurred for "recips" -- but mere logic indicates that a link today is worth less than yesturday, and will continue to be less tomorrow since PageRank is calculated on the whole... and the whole get bigger each update.
There's been a lot of speculation on whether or not Google is SEO-friendly and whether they're actually sweet, dear people looking for peaceful co-existence with the industry or maliciously and deviously intent on wiping the SEO industry out. Actually, looking at what they've been doing for the past few months, Google is somehow reminiscent of Tokyo Rose during World War II.
Regardless of their intent, let's look at what Google is actually accomplishing.
There's a decided difference between informational sites and the sites that just need to sell stuff.
A kid who has to do a science report for school is looking for information. If his parents are buying him a scale model kit of a spacecraft for his birthday and Mom is shopping on her half hour lunch break, she won't be wading through links and reading information. She wants pictures, descriptions, good prices and fast ordering.
There's also a decided difference between being the proprietor of an ecom site and a search engine promoter marketing services to site proprietors. The guy who owns the site wants it however it will make sales. The promoter wants to sell services. Neither one is a philanthropist motivated by making the web a better place. Sorry, Mother Theresa never had to pay bandwidth bills.
A resources section with quality informational links will suit Junior and Mom just fine. In fact, if Junior is doing a school report Mom can go home and tell him about the site and he can quickly find what he needs for his report without having to wade through the whole site.
The site owner can't support his family without Mom pulling out the credit card on her lunch hour. But a promoter can't support his family without selling services to site owners. What the Google paranoia about linking is creating is an army of fear-filled site owners ripe and ready to be exploited by SEOs.
So much for whether Google is pro or con SEO's. With the proliferation of penalties and fear-mongering about penalties that goes on, Google is playing right into the hands of the part of the SEO industry that's got that particular psychology figured out and devised a marketing strategy that plays right smack into the middle of it.
Fear as a motivator can be a powerful sales tool. So can the vulnerability that accompanies ignorance. All a smart marketer has to do is do nothing to allay fears and use a pitch implying some arcane knowledge of a "secret sauce" to beat the system.
Ka-ching! Ring up another fear-filled SEO client for the savvy SEO marketer who identified the weakness and figured out how to exploit it. All with with Google's help.
Please remember that your perspective may not be the same as the perspective of visitors to your site. The puzzlement we face is that we don't know - and can't know for sure, if we're to be brutally honest - what Google's perspective is.
Maybe detailed analysis over time for any given site can tell a certain amount, but the whole gist of my personal opinion in this area is that we should beware of the snake-oil peddlars with crystal balls out there who fail to examine and divulge the possibilities in terms of details. Cryptically presented theories may constitute good marketing, but how substantial are they in terms of pragmatic reality? How much is informational and how much of it is marketing at its finest? Wasn't it JC_Penney who said, relative to successful marketing strategies, "Find a need and fill it?"
How many links to you has that site provided? How many links back are you intending to give to them? On which pages - and what is the context of the pages your links to them will be on?
The dirt is in the details, and unfortunately there's precious little of details we have to go by, or that people are willing or capable of divulging. Therefore, many among us can be prone to exploitation, and that's not good for any of us.
Google is not going to penalize for reciprocal links.
Google is not likely to penalize a page for being a "links" page.
Google is not going to penalize off-topic links.
None of these are activities that will draw a penalty. They are too common in non-SEOed sites and are the *natural* way that the web works and the way that it worked before webcrawler, much less Google.
There are a couple of things that might be happening though.
First, google might be giving bonuses to sites that seem to represent a more natural linking pattern. It is not likely to be on a link by link basis, but more of a judgement the entire webgraph of links surrounding that page or site.
The second thing that might be happening, and this could be related to "penalties", "links pages" and "reciprocal linking", is that links pages that meet certain criterial as being there only for SEO purposes might get a penalty.
It has been suggested, in the infamous "disappearing index pages" threads, that one of the things that google is looking at is having all the anchor text pointing at a page the same. What if a link page only has links that use the anchor text that matches all the other anchor text poining to your linking partners?
Those pages are almost always there for the simple purpose of search engine manipulation, and would be the sort of thing that google would view as being valid targets. They would be trimming problem pages out, not doing slash and burn across the web.
First, google might be giving bonuses to sites that seem to represent a more natural linking pattern. It is not likely to be on a link by link basis, but more of a judgement the entire webgraph of links surrounding that page or site.
BigDave, consider yourself *smooched." ;)
Google is not going to penalize for reciprocal links.
Google is not likely to penalize a page for being a "links" page.
Google is not going to penalize off-topic links.
Ah, but could they not devalue their weight in scoring relative to the relative weight of all the other 100+ factors measured in scoring?
But not everyone does and not everyone sees it the same way. How relevant is a link back to them, related to the topic of your site, and what your visitors would be interested in?
2. My link is not to GoGuides home page, but to the related category. It contains only related information, including competitors. It is similar to linking to your dmoz cat (Don't do it, I hear its a bad neighbourhood).
C. I was trying to make a specific point to bring up a more general problem. If Google were to penalise or even substantially devalue reciprocal links, what would the result be. The interconnectivity of the web would be substantially altered. IMO not for the better.
You're right Marcia, it does present opportunities to hornswaggle. BTW I just checked and hornswaggle.com is available. That provides an opportunity according to JC Penney. I think I'll go to work.;)
The more well rounded the SEO strategy, the less likely you are to be hurt by it. Those that go overboard in one way or another can easily take a dive in cases like that.
I honestly don't think it is even likely that there is ANY difference between the weighting on one-way and reciprocal links. In the natural linking case, reciprocal links are *more* likely to be on-topic than one way links. It is only those reciprocal links that are used purely for search engine manipulation that are the problem.
Think about who your town's parks department is likely to link to. Almost all of them will link right back to them because they are all related. They will have links to and from the town's main site. They will probably have links to and from the local sports organizations and senior centers. The same with the county and regional parks departments that have parks within or near the city.
They link to each other (reciprocal) because they ARE related and "on-theme". Google's goal will be to mess with the troublesome sites while leaving the natural reciprocal linking alone.
