To Link or Not to Link

Heard conflicting info on value of recipricol Linking

[peter andreas]

I am confused about whether it is good to ask for recipricol links (from relevant related sites etc)or not as some people say its the only way to build good PR but others say Google frowns upon it.

Any opinions please?

[Tupur]

Hi Peter, welcome to Webmaster world.

AFAIK Google dislikes link spammimg, FFA Links, Links Scams...etc.

But with quality reciprocal links you have nothing to worry about. Go ahead with a good linking strategy and it will only help you.

[tomparis]

Google likes links from high PR sites.

Try to get rep links from relevant websites
with the same topics and formats as yours.
Plus good content and a PR of 5 or above,
not that PR4 & PR3 sites
will hurt you, but
they do not count
as much.

AVOID sites with a PR of 0.

This bad neighborhood will cost you.

[rogerd]

These days, PR0 isn't always an indicator of a bad neighborhood. New sites may start off at PR0, and new pages added to existing sites also may be PR0. Certainly, if a well established site is showing PR0 across all pages, that's a caution flag and it's worth checking for any obvious spam, link farming, etc. But I wouldn't assume that PR0 implies a penalty.

I'd recommend worrying less about PR and more about linking to good sites. A high quality site will attract links from others, too, and its PR will increase.

[nakulgoyal]

I vote for rogerd. Get Links. Not PR. Nobody says, Do PR Building. We suggest do Link Building.

A Link is a Link. A PR0 today may be PR5 tomorrow and a PR7 today might be penalized and maybe PR2 tomorrow. So leave things for Google Team, and just insist on getting Links.

In a case study that I am writing, I mentioned a particular client for whom we did 50,000 links in over 1 year. He is now so very happy that nobody on the web can imagine. he has lots of traffic, PR, Links and everything else. Above all, he has Sales. Worth over 400,000US$. :-)

I will put a link to the case study on my website once it's up there. But again, that will say in long what I say in short here. Get Links. Don't hunt for buying PR.

Make sure they are not FFA links, NO Guestbook Links, NO Link Farms...100% geniune HTML links. NO Hidden Links or Hidden Text!

[creative craig]

Google likes links from high PR sites.

Google does not care, it just likes links to follow, PR0 or PR10 a link is a link :)

[peter andreas]

Surely Yahoo KNOWS everyone is rushing around linking up?

I can see that if someone links to you then its a vote for your site but surely if you link right back that votes negated?

Sorry doesn't make sense to me, isn't Google being hood winked?

Maybe I'm playing devils advocate but before I embark on sending heaps of emails and spend time sifting through sites I just want to be sure I'm doing the right thing.

I have always tried to think 'What Would Google make of this' and I come unstuck with links...

[layer8]

Yes also - its a good idea to check PR on home page - I just had an ISP problem that effected my new pages, trouble is I just migrated to a new directory structure so all my directory pages have a PR0 - Google told me that it would be fixed in next update, however I still have PR on my homepage :)

Also one draw back is the amount of crapy sites emailing you for a link - i.e. viagra sites, betting sites etc.

Its a small price to pay and is well worth it if you vet your link partners first...

[layer8]

If you do it right you can get around 30% traffic from a good linking strategy, another thing to think about.

1 visitor from a PR1 site is better than no visitor from a PR10 :-)

[tomparis]

Let's say you have a non-commercial website about
osteoporosis & women's health issues.

You live on banner ads & google ad sense.
The ads barely pay for bandwidth.
Your PR3 does not attract many link offers.

Then you beg a big commercial company with a PR7
to link to your website.

By letting them put on an ad for free, Like:

CORAL CALCIUM - BONE HEALTH
100% Pure Okinawa Ocean Bed (Marine Grade) Coral Calcium is currently being offering at wholesale prices.

Your pr shoots from 3 to 6.
You get hundreds of offers for links
and lots of traffic and clicks.

If you had convinced 100 PR4 sites to link to you,
you might get a boost to PR5, MAYBE.

DO THE MATH.

[peter andreas]

Ok, I can see that its great to get 100 pr 4 links but won't you then 'blead' back this when you in turn put 100 links back to them or is it a one way thing , once you have PR you can't loose it?

But I'm still fundementally opposed to recipricol links, it just bothers me, but if it boosts my PR I'll do it. I'm just worried I'll be penalized later when Google changes its mind and I reckon it will in an attempt to sort the good sites from the chaff.

[flashgc]

It's been my experience that reciprocal links bring you traffic you might not have had otherwise. Can't see that it has affected search engine ranking in any way.

[DaveAtIFG]

I am confused about whether it is good to ask for recipricol links

My experience is that honest reciprocol links (not "link farms" or link exchange programs) between related sites offers some Page Rank benefit in Google and, as others have pointed out, can provide substantial traffic. Synthetic linking tricks are definitely discouraged by Google. Re: [google.com...]

[auinfo]

Thanks for very good advice.I agree well thought out recipricol links which compliment each others sites are of value but I read whilst searching this forum that the 'Top' sites have 10 000 links (how can these all be of value, to be honest). So do I need this sort of number as I was thinking in the order of 100 or so that I could realisticlly hope to get.?

[elklabone]

Peter,

You need to remember that Link Exchanges are as old as the internet itself... it's very natural for similar websites to organize information for their vistiors into catgories and "swap traffic".

Our website sells health supplements.. so it's natural for me to link to a partner who sells health equipment, and expect a link back in return.

You're thinking about the potential for abuse in this, and yes, the system isn't perfect.

However, it's much harder to duplicate links than it is to monkey with on-page elements with software like web position gold (which lots of us used to do before Google).

By starting an active link exchange program, we took our traffic from less than 1000 hits per week to over 3000 hits per week. Part of this is a result of our increased ranings in google, but part of it is also free TARGETED traffic from our link partners.

It's important to do this right, and our ultimate goal is to add 1000 link partners, all QUALITY link partners. We're about 35% there... and yes, this takes a lot of time. We hire a high school kid to work as our LinkMaster, and he adds about 50-75 links per month, which isn't bad.

If you're interested, I can show you some search terms that do very well because of reciprocal links, there's also a free ebook I can send you that has some good info in it on this topic. Sticky me if you're interested.

Mark

[elklabone]

but won't you then 'blead' back this when you in turn put 100 links back to them or is it a one way thing , once you have PR you can't loose it?

This is a common misconception. Two things:

1.) PageRank is PAGERank, not SITERank.

2.) PageRank doesn't "bleed" or "leak" off of a page.

Our homepage is PR5. Our links directory is PR4 and our lindividual LinksPages are PR3.

This is pretty normal, because our highest rank page is the one with the most incoming links (our homepage). Our homepage "votes" for our links page and gives it a 4.

Our Links Page votes for the individual link page categories and they all wind up with a 3.

I could put 200 links on my homepage, and my homepage would still be a 5. However, the voting power that this page has would be diminished, so with each additional link, its not going to boost other pages as much.

That's why you don't want to be in a link directory with 5000 other links. Your link should always be 2-3 clicks away from their home page.... So, you always want to work with a webmaster like me ;-)

[jim_w]

better to link and lost than to never linked at all

[peter andreas]

Many thanks for all the good replies. OK, I will try and get a small number of quality links. I was just worried the whole recipricol link thing would be penalized by Google eventually but I think if I link and I can justify in my own mind why they are there (to help our users and not just to boost our PR.) then we should be OK.

Only just started but its not easy to get people to link though-but thats another story...

Peter

[DaveAtIFG]

Link Exchanges are as old as the internet itself

Buying adverising from a site with high traffic is ALMOST as old as link exchanges. If the site that sells the ad has a high PR and your PR happens to increase, who's to say whether you're buying traffic or PR?

[Fruit and Veg]

Peter - do yourself a massive favour...forget about PR. Link to sites you like and that are relevant to your own site, it really is that simple. Don't be scared of reciprocal linking either - people may leave your site from a link, but if you have a wealth of information then your site will be their natural starting point. Open links in a new window anyway.

Jim_W - those words were....sniff, sniff...beautiful...sob, sob....

[brizad]

What is apparent (apparently) is that you have to make sure ALL of your incoming links are not the same link text. Google seems to have discounted the value of incoming links if they if they are **too optimized**

It seems that a mix of optimized and *natural* incoming links works best now.

[jim_w]

brizad

So if your business name is KW KW something, (like Sombody’s Used Cars or Hard Drives Are US), and all the inbounds are your company name, and your URL is KWKWsomething.com, then you are $screwed.

I really hope NO SE is that brainless.