Should I remove low PR reciprocal links?

What effect would this have?

[sachac]

My site presently ranks #3 for a very competitive keyword and I'm trying to improve on this. I have a reciprocal links page and I have noticed recently that a number of my link partners have fallen below PR4.

Should I remove the link to these sites? If I do, what impact would this have on my page rank and on my overall Google ranking?

[WebGuerrilla]

If you are #3, you shouldn't do a thing. If you start making tweaks to try and move up 2 places, you will most likely end up going the other direction.

[killroy]

In concur. At this stage I think it's more of the same. Tweaking on page factors is too risky now, and links are always good.

The only consideration might be if you link to one of th etwo sites above you. You might want to risk removeing those links at the risk of loosign their recips. But as I said it's risky, since those might be jsut the thing that got you up there in the first place.

SN

[suggy]

Leave well alone Sachac!

What makes you think 3 isn't better than 1 anyway?!

IMHO there is no difference, if not a negative one from being number one.

Think about it. When you search do you really automatically go straight for number one? I normally work my way up from about 3!

[athinktank]

i concur.

was doing great, got greedy last month, added links. now down down down. 1/6 the traffic.

if your kewl, just be kewl.

[sachac]

Wow, Google has really gotten to be unpredictable! Actually our site has been fluctuating between #2 and #3 for this category keyword (in 4 million results) for over a year now.

One of the main reasons for trying to get to #1 is to help us build branding for our online store. Promoting the fact that you are #1 for something is very brandable. It also helps give the potential customer more confidence thereby improving your visitor/customer conversion rate.

We also market our brand offline in 23 countries (which is by far our major business) and are always seeking distributors worldwide. When potential distributors see us at #1 for our category keyword, we get instant respect. It is for these reasons that doing nothing is not an option for us.

I nevertheless take the advice give very seriously. Having said that, what is the safest proactive approach for us to take at this time?

[killroy]

Well, all I would do at this stage is carefully add high-quality, on topy high-PR incoming links from respectable sources (i.e. not link buying).

Also look VERY carefully at hte remainder of the top10, who links to them and who they link to.

SN

[baron13]

I cleaned my link directory 3 month ago! We have exchanged links with more than 1400 link partners and we cleaned it up.....only 170 links with pr >=4 remained! After that our website climbed up from place 38 to place 14 in google! Not a good value but we work on that....;)!

We still don't know if our ranking increased because we removed the links but we think so!

Google says that webmasters should only trade with a good neighbourhood (pr >=4) and we try to accept only websites with pr 4 or higher and we hope that google will value that in a good way!

Maybe it is bad to trade with pr 0-3? Someone else made some experiences?

[Lilliabeth]

Google says that webmasters should only trade with a good neighbourhood (pr >=4)

I didn't know that... where did you read it?

[rogerd]

Google says that webmasters should only trade with a good neighbourhood (pr >=4)

False, false, false... First, Google doesn't talk about "trading". Second, Google DID caution (way back when) about linking to bad neighborhoods, but never defined a bad neighborhood as something below PR4.

GoogleGuy's caution was mainly directed at linking to risky sites like link farms. Specifically, if a link farm links to your site, that shouldn't penalize you as your competitor might have signed you up; but if you link back to the link farm, it's a reasonable assumption you are are an active participant.

Link to sites that make sense for your visitors. Don't pay too much attention to PR, except try to avoid linking to spammy sites. One or two bad links probably won't hurt you, but IMO it's a good idea to avoid them when you spot them.

[Lilliabeth]

Thanks you, rogerd, for getting right to the point.

Sometimes I have difficulty figuring out how to get straight to the point and still be polite. You were great.

[rogerd]

Thanks, LB... I should point out that there are some other issues. For example, could non-reciprocated inbound links count for more than reciprocal links? If so, that could at least partly explain baron13's rise in rankings. Of course, one has to be cautious about assuming that a ranking change is due to a particular action one has taken.

[Powdork]

Promoting the fact that you are #1 for something is very brandable.

Careful with that, as soon as you put the promotion in print (or spend money on it) you'll bounce back to #2 or #3. I actually sent out emails back in May to potential clients stating they could find me at #1 for a particular phrase. Only later did I realize my home page had disappeared from the index for three days. When they searched, they found my competitor at #1. :(