Reciprocal Article Links: Good, Bad, or Indifferent ?

[doughayman]

Hi,

Quick question for all. I've written several good articles that have been posted in Article directories. These articles have good PR and contain backlinks that point to my website (all good). Would it behoove me to create a webpage on my website, that contain link references to these articles in their article directories ? Would these "reciprocal" links add value, detract value, or make no difference to my website, in SEO terms ?

I've considered posting these articles as content on my site as well, by the way, but I felt that this may result in duplicate content detection, which couldn't help at all, so I've decided not to add this content to my site.

Comments appreciated.

Thanks.

[tedster]

We've been testing all kinds of scenarios for articles, and what seems to work the best so far is posting the article to ONE quality article site, and having it link to a page that expands on the information in the article. I would not create reciprocal links (they seem to be ignored, at best) and definitely would not reprint the article on the parent site.

[doughayman]

OK, Ted. Thank you for that useful reply.

[keto]

When defining quality of an article site - do you use relevancy/topic of the directory as your number one factor or something else?

[tedster]

I check out all the signs I can for the article site - including what their own site:example.com results look like, whether they are engaged in any dicey promotional practices and so on. Having a section that is on-topic is certainly a factor, but I'm mostly looking for sign of legitimate activities all around.