How does Google view sites designed for reciprical links

It lists others that want links

[EAHunt]

How does Google view a Links Swap Partner that lists companies in your category that want to people to link to them. Since I am sooooo Google Gun shy I want to make sure that I don't do anything that will mess up our in house sites

<edit>They advertise a link exchange service for increasing traffic and link popularity.

[edited by: ciml at 9:37 am (utc) on Sep. 25, 2002]
[edit reason] Paraphrased identifiable text at member request. [/edit]

[egomaniac]

Link swapping is fine. Go ahead and do it.

Getting links to you without the swap is better when you can find it. Regional and vertical directories can provide this. Also if/when your content is really good, sites will begin linking to you without asking for the reciprocal link.

[nancyb]

Swapping a link with a site is fine, but if these sites are in any way a link farm (set up just to increase link popularity to the member sites), I wouldn't. Google does not like link farms, or anything else done solely for the purpose of increasing your rank in the index.

[taxpod]

I'd really like to agree with everyone on the notion that a link farm will always be caught and penalized by Google. But in my subject area, I just don't see it. Here's what I mean.

Search the keyword "<snip>" on Google. The currently number two site in the serps is titled "<snip>." All it is is a reciprocal link farm. There is some other way out of date content leftover from another day but the site is primarily a link farm. Everyone listed there, including me, knows that. But for a very long time (years) this site has held the number one or two position in the serps. It's a PR7 and was even an 8 for a while. You get complete control over your anchor text so the pages are filled with nothin but superior keywords. Almost all the main sites in the category use it.

My point is that if this site can sit atop the serps and carry a PR7 or 8, why worry about setting up a site whose purpose is a link exchange. If the theme of your site was SEO and you sold SEO services, you'd probably have a problem with a link farm. But Google does not do a great job of finding the link farms.

Of course if they did find this one and determine that it was a farm, it would hurt me directly. But it would also hurt directly most of the good sites in that space.

[edited by: ciml at 9:51 am (utc) on Sep. 25, 2002]
[edit reason] No identifiable sites please. [/edit]

[crobb305]

A good rule of thumb that I follow...I will only add a site to my reciprocal-links list that has a Google PR of 5 or higher. Additionally, I will only request a link exchange with a site whose reciprocal-links page (where MY site will be listed) is 4 or higher and whose top page is 5 or higher. Following this criteria for me helps to ensure that I am getting involved with sites that are viewed in the eyes of Google as "decent". I also try to stay within the theme of my site. If you exchange links with quality sites and place their links on a reciprocal-links page, I can't see any harm...it has only helped me. Of course, there may be a "safe" limit to the number of outbound links you should have on a single page.

[teeceo]

hi all.

What if you built a few doorway pages and did the "reciprocal link" thing with that site and pointed the doorway page to your main page for the PR; if the doorway page site got band(and you didn't have a link going from your "main site" to it, can your "main site" get banned too?

teeceo.