Few Questions on Link Trading & Google

[Roaming Gnome]

I have a few A to A link exchanges with sites in my niche.

1. If one of my link partners has a link to my site with "blue widget" and a while later he adds a link to another site with the same "blue widget" anchor text - How much does that hurt my link?

2. A site links to me with "blue widget" and links to another site with "big blue widget" or "free blue widget" - Are these link swaps even worth having?

3. If a link has not shown up in my backlinks in 6 months should I cancel the swap?

Thanks.

[tedster]

The most important thing to appreciate is that reciprocal links (link swaps) have only minimal value to begin with. It's not zero value, but it is limited and beyond a certain number, it can be nearly zero value.

There's no anchor text issue - in that only one link on a page can carry weight for a particular keyword. Nothing like that.

But I'd also add this. The point of linking to another site should be that you feel the other site has value for your audience. And likewise from the other site to you. Google scores links so differently today than they used to, and links are also a smaller part of ranking than they used to be. Significant in many cases, yes, but not the be all and end all. I routinely see sites outranking others on strong keywords where the lower ranked site has 9 or 10 times the backlink strength.

[zehrila]

There's no anchor text issue - in that only one link on a page can carry weight for a particular keyword. Nothing like that.

Just recently i acquired a link with an anchor Blue Widgets, it is an authority site, however, he already had another link with anchor Blue Widgets. I waited a week, my link was appearing in google cache with in few hours of placement, but i did not see any movement in serp at all. I asked the guy to change the anchor to Blue Widgets in Green and with in day, my site site jumped up for terms Blue Widgets and Blue Widgets in Green. Now it can be totally coincidental, but i thought i should share the experience.

[Roaming Gnome]

The point of linking to another site should be that you feel the other site has value for your audience.

Thanks Tedster. When I initially made these swaps, it was an attempt to get better ranking and not for the surfer. These sites are in direct competition with me, so I am really considering removing the trades.

@Zehrila, Thanks. I will try to get my link partner to change my anchor text to something a little different to see if that helps.

[Planet13]

Witu all due respect to tedster, who knows MUCH more about this than I ever will, the top 10 sites in the very narrow niche I track rank primarily due to simple reciprocal links with keywords in the anchor text.

It does not matter that the sites that link to them are not related. Having an exact match for the keywords in the anchor text seems to be the main factor.

Please note that the keywords in question have a low search volume - maybe 30K searches a month in the US, so the effect of rrciprocal links might be a lot less for keywords that have a higher monthly search volume.

[tedster]

I asked the guy to change the anchor to Blue Widgets in Green and with in day, my site site jumped up for terms Blue Widgets and Blue Widgets in Green.

Thanks for the report, zehrila. It's the first like this that I've heard, and it does at least suggest that my understanding may be wrong.

the top 10 sites in the very narrow niche I track rank primarily due to simple reciprocal links with keywords in the anchor text.

I can see that, Planet13. I never thought that reciprocal links had no effect at all - and if that's mostly what there is in backlinks in a particular niche, then your report makes sense.