Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Its not as cut and dry as that but I think that from that real simple view it seems it can be detected.
Well, that could be a lot of things. While links are definitely the most important factor, there are still other factors, such as on page, anchor text of the links, the number of backlinks to the sites you are trying to move above in the serps, internal links/anchor, age of your site and the like.
>>>Also, I have heard that reciprocal links are not given the value which were they once given
You'll hear a lot of stuff in SEO. Some right, some wrong. Recip links still work. I see tons of sites in competitive categories sitting at #1 in Google solely on their power.
I'm not saying that I believe them to be the best in terms of a long term strategy, but they certainly work. IMHO, never take "what you hear" as fact. Always test theories yourself and come up with your own conclusions.
Is reciprocal linking dead for offsite SEO purposes?(boosting one's ranking)
In Google, I think it is dead. The jury is out on Yahoo and in MSN it works like a charm. (My experience).
However, I think more importance should be placed on reciprocal linking in mind for traffic purposes rather then SEO.
For example: I would absolutely love it to have traffic to certain websites increase their average daily uniques by 20 visitors from link partners. (This is in an area where 60 uniques a day can earn $1,000 in income. Not talking AdSense either).
Works for me, but probably not 99 percent of other webmasters.
Going back to the original question, is reciprocal linking dead? I think it is getting harder, and the harder work will discourage a lot of webmasters and link companies. For the automated button pushers, finding link partners becomes a matter of statistics - I suppose.
Something to think about.