Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Stick to links to sites that would be of interst to your visitors, not sites you think will help with the search engines.
Google etc., can spot a link network at 3.2 light years, and if it doesn't hurt you today, it will soon.
Reciprocal networks are a sure way to hurt your site.
This is only the case if you do it wrong. It all depends on how and who you reciprocate links with. Don't bash reciprocation just because there are many junk link exchange networks on the web.
It can be done properly: in low volume over a long period of time with quality relevant sites that benefit the end user.
It can be done poorly: in high volume over a short period of time to junk or low quality sites.
Case in point: Our parent company launched a new service on January 1 that started with no inbound links and no pagerank (pagerank null is hard on a new business!.. we got tired of "why is your PR null?" questions.
Today is May 1.. the new site has been online for only FOUR MONTHS. We have promoted the site exclusively through aggressive link exchange. We bought only about four maybe five quality text links. Four months into the link exchange campaign, we have over 140 inbound links from quality sites. Many of our new customers have come from the links themselves and not from a search engine. Our PR jumped up to FIVE in only four months. And we are ranking in the top 11-20 for our keywords. Not top ten yet but we expect that within the next six months.
This is undeniable proof that link exchange works (not hurts) when you do it correctly and for the benefit of the end user first and foremost.
Anything with a submit form for exchanging links is surely being targeted too. Another -1 point.
From my perspective...
Link to us page. is it completly useless?
Yes.
[mattcutts.com...]
"As Google changes algorithms over time, excessive reciprocal links will probably carry less weight. That could also account for a site having more pages in supplemental results if excessive reciprocal links (or other link-building techniques) begin to be counted less. As I said in January: “The approach I’d recommend in that case is to use solid white-hat SEO to get high-quality links (e.g. editorially given by other sites on the basis of merit)."
So I don't think the link to us help your website to rank higher in search engine, but certainly it will still pass some page rank to your site.
Reciprocal links by themselves aren’t automatically bad
but we’ve communicated before that there is such a thing as excessive reciprocal linking
Exactly what I have been preaching in these forums for the past few months. You can do it right or you can do it wrong. Nothing wrong with doing it right when it benefits your end user.
Reciprocal networks are a sure way to hurt your site.
... remains true. Wholesale reciprocating is EXACTLY what MC is warning against, if you read the whole message.
For those of you not familiar with these terms..
Reciprocal networks are typically full duplex networks that force you to link with sites (typically in high volume) without maintaining editorial discretion.
Wholesale reciprocating is typically related to irrelevant link exchange.. the site MC referred to in his post today was a classic example. The site has a link category for everything under the sun.
Create link categories that benefit your end user. Link to sites that help your end user learn more about your own product/service/information in low/natural volume.
Create link categories that benefit your end user. Link to sites that help your end user learn more about your own product/service/information.
And may I ask why that has to be done through a "directory style" environment? How many people actually browse those link directories? Come on now, exclude all Webmaster types and how many "real converting visitors" are browsing that directory? And, let's see if the visitor can find a link to that directory easily from the main site.
Why can't one just link naturally? There is nothing natural about a links directory. Nada. Its unnatural as can be. Its like having a leech attached to your site. It just sits there and sucks the life blood right out of your main site.
For those of you who have these anchors attached to your site, do me a favor, would ya? Remove it for 30 days and watch what happens, drop a meta robots tag with "none" at the top of those pages.
<meta name="robots" content="none">You can report back to us in this topic and let us know the outcome. I'd be interested in confirming what I've already experimented with in the past. If there are links there that you really want to keep, find a better way to link to those sites without the link being in a directory style environment.
[edited by: pageoneresults at 10:16 pm (utc) on May 1, 2007]
The discussion of the merits of reciprocal linking itself is another discussion altogether.
this thread was about reciprocation programs, not sensible linking.
Thanks Quadrille.
:)
I have joined few reciprocal link building program. Almost all it's member put others link to a separate link list file typically called as "links" or "our link partner".
Those are link farms and IMHO those are seriously risky. One beautiful example is a site I've seen "owning" the SERPs for their keywords for several years with a bunch of anchor text from irrelevant, off topic sites. Now at the very end of 950+ and ranking for nothing.
Recips done sensibly and in good taste are OK. Link farms are not.
A little eager to say that. I see many link pages every day with pretty good PR, and many links pointing to them.
I don't understand if this devaluation means links are worth less or if the actual page they sit on is devalued.
Either way, I see no evidence of this, my PR increased, I get 2400 link requests each year, and set for many more, therefore I don't see a problem.
Reciprocal programs are dodgy, as you can never be sure who you are linking to. I give them a wide berth.
My theory is that people panic over links, then link out to the wrong sites. Could be the reason for some sites getting less favourable treatment.
[edited by: Helpinghand at 1:45 pm (utc) on May 2, 2007]
