Internal Reciprocal Links

[corepartner]

Hi,

If I provide link to page B from page A and provide link to Page from page B.

which page will get the advantage on Google?

Basically I want to know all the advantages and disadvantages of INTERNAL RECIPROCAL link building.

I am planning a site architecture of my new site and I hope I will make no mistake.

Looking forward to your replies.

Thanks
CorePartner

[goodroi]

The simple answer is if I give you a dollar and you give me a dollar - we both have one dollar and neither has an advantage.

The more complicated reality is that Google looks at many different elements of links. Where is the link placed in the page? What is the anchor text? Does it have a nofollow tag? How many other outbound links are on the page? How many inbound links point to the source page? There are many, many other factors that Google looks at.

What is your primary goal? Do you want your main pages to rank? Do you want maximum number of pages indexed? Or do you want something else?

[corepartner]

Thanks for reply :)

I want my main pages to rank higher on the SERPS.

Looking forward to your reply.

[goodroi]

If you want to rank higher in the serps focus on gaining external links to your pages. A site that has perfect internal links and no inbound links from external sites will not rank. Go out and get links from external sources.

[corepartner]

I know this, but I wanted to make everything fine from on page perspective as I have read somewhere on this forum that for big sites, site architecture is on of the most important thing.

[bhartzer]

corepartner, I would start with the classic search engine theme pyramid [webmasterworld.com...]

[tedster]

Definitely don't overthink this issue. Reciprocal internal linking is unavoidable in any useful site navigation.

Create your navigational structure with a view toward the end user, and Google most often gets it right in the search results. But trying to do some kind of internal linking yoga for Google's sake usually hurts you somewhere or other.

[corepartner]

Definitely don't overthink this issue. Reciprocal internal linking is unavoidable in any useful site navigation.

Create your navigational structure with a view toward the end user, and Google most often gets it right in the search results. But trying to do some kind of internal linking yoga for Google's sake usually hurts you somewhere or other.

I believe this is what I wanted to hear. Thanks :D

[internetheaven]

What is the anchor text?

I agree that this is the most important thing with internal linking. That, and not doubling up i.e. only one link to any other page. Don't have a "contact us" link at the top, bottom, navigation and in the text!

[balibones]

The simple answer is if I give you a dollar and you give me a dollar - we both have one dollar and neither has an advantage.

While the basic sentiment is right, that statement isn't true when it applies to page rank. That statement implies that you lose the amount of page rank your page keeps for itself when it links out, which isn't the case. When you link out you lose some of the page rank you have to GIVE, but not what you have to keep yourself.

So if I have a dollar and I link out to one site I still have a dollar. If I link to five sites the OTHER dollar I had set aside to give to charity is now split five-ways instead of one. But I still have my dollar.

Google recognized early on what such a reciprocal issue entailed, which is why they put a dampening factor into their core page rank algorithm.

To make a long story short, reciprocal interlinks between to pages within your own website does not cancel each other out. But like GoodROI said, there are also lots of other factors at play. And you want to make sure you do focus on internally linking intelligently because the dollar you have set aside for charity DOES get split up more and more ways with every link you add.