Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I checked out another SEO company, all of their clients sites have "links pages" and they persue a 100% recipricol link strategy.
They also use the classic SEO BY... footer link to their site as well as to another site they own.
I decided to checkout their clients link pages, and guess what , most of them greyed out pr toolbars -- penalty!
A few questions:
1. Does anyone here actually still use reciprocal linking?
2. Do you think its ethical to use this strategy?
3. I think we all agree that linking to their own sites is also not ethical.
I just want to make clear, for those who don't know, that cnvi has an economic interest in promoting the positive side of reciprocal link building. Much of what he says is true, and I agree with him on many points.
However in the interest of understanding the whole truth it's important to understand that there is a risk, however minimal, that the site could be penalized IF it comes under scrutiny. The odds of the site not coming under scrutiny and your site getting away with it are not too bad. But there is still a possibility that it could happen. So it's a game of risk, however minimal that may be. I'm not trying to scare anyone off of reciprocal linking, but I think it would be irresponsible to not mention that reciprocal linking has its share of risk- just as buying links has it's share of risk.
Martinibuster is right that there is some risk. Most link building methods carry some risk. However, you can pass a hand check if you simply obtain relevant links (through reciprocation if thats what it takes) slowly over a long period of time. The search engines are trending how quickly you obtain links.
Full duplex services that force reciprocation in high volume is not the same as obtaining relevant links with editorial discretion one at a time. So many folks cloud full duplex with editor based and my presence here is to help educate the difference between the two.
Martinibuster is right that there is some risk. Most link building methods carry some risk. However, you can pass a hand check if you simply obtain relevant links (through reciprocation if thats what it takes) slowly over a long period of time.
Link build rate, while dealing with threshold, is only one element of link building and generally applies to *most* links except perhaps high quality links from news sources.
A website with 500 reciprocal links will not likely pass a hand check, regardless of the speed at which links are built.
A website with 500 reciprocal links will not likely pass a hand check, regardless of the speed at which links are built.
Quite incorrect. Its not the total number of links.. its the rate at which you obtain them. This is documented in Google's 2003 Search Engine 125 patent. I also have proof of this from a decade of link building experience.
One of our clients has about 850 reciprocal links for her homemade jewelry website. She has been linking for about six years. She obtained the 850 over six years of time or about 140 a year. She obtained them all slowly over this large expanse of time. Her rankings are solid in very competitive keywords. Her link partners are all very relative to women's accessories and fashion (she doesnt link to mortgage brokers or online phramacies).
And then we see clients who come to us who have a 1000 links that they obtained from a full duplex service in a very short period of time (3 months). They have very poor rankings.
Search engines realize some (older) sites will have a very high number of recips so they trend how often you get them. If your trend rate busts their threshholds, then your domain is probably sent to a human team for a hand check.
A domain that is ten years old is more likely to have a large number of reciprocal links. A new domain is less likely to have a high number of reciprocal links. Its the RATE at which you obtain links, not the total number.
Now maybe it's the fact that I have structured the site to include a directory. BUT, much like Yahoo, I have a submission form whereas webmasters can submit their link to the directory. I do not require a link back, I do not charge a dime. In fact, the site in question is a hobby site that generates no money whatsoever. The only difference in my Site and a site like Yahoo is that instead of a fee to submit your site, I ask if you would be willing to add a link on your site. Nothing more. Not submitting a link back does not exclude your site from being listed. The only thing that would do that is if your site was not related.
Let's take something very generic, like hunting. You build a site related to hunting in a particular state. You call that site Hunting in (state). You build a forum. You build a place where users can submit photos of their hunts. You build a directory RELATED to hunting. In the directory, you list everything and anything that has to do with hunting from government offices (DNR for each state) to gun stores, ammo stores, clothing, camping gear, other forums and sites, scopes, shooting ranges, guide services, solunar tables, where to get local hunting reports, butchers, types of hunting, bows, rifles, anything, and I mean everything that is related to hunting. Of course, it helps if you are a hunter yourself.
Now, what you have built over the years is a site that...
A. Is authoritive
B. Useful to your users
C. If you play your cards right, extremly popular.
In fact, if you REALLY play your cards right, a place where most hunters would go to find information related to hunting, especially in your state.
Now a question, if I may. Why would Google penalize a site like that? G wouldn't. That is my whole point. IF you build for the users and if you put in enough energy into the site to really make it an authority, you have nothing to fear. Where people get in trouble is when they build a shopping cart to sell something and tack on a related links page to try to elevate their PR and ranking. The problem with that is that everyone is doing it.
I have always preached the authoritive route when building a site. You want to sell handkerchiefs on-line? Then I would suggest you build a site about handkerchiefs... how they are made, thread counts, different types of fabrics and where they are made, personalized, types of knitting, hankies for ocassions, etc., etc., etc. Become an authority on handkerchiefs! What you end up with would be much more profitable then a hundred different colored hankies, a shopping basket and a related links page.
Anywayz... that's my 2 cents worth.
webdude, thanks for your input. :) This is a great example of the editorial discretion available to Google. Obviously there's something about your site and the way you've gone about link building that caused them to take a pass on penalizing your site. I'm curious though, how do you know your site was subjected to a hand check?
I know of sites with less than five hundred recips that were banned out of one or another search engine. As I mentioned in another thread, there may not be specific numerical thresholds and many other ambiguities, yet the risk is very real.
Several years ago I spoke with a Google engineer (not Matt) during the New Orleans pubcon and his face went sour at the mention of recip link directories and he made it quite clear that he disliked them. Despite webdude's happy experience, I would say that is the exception to an actual hand check, not the norm.
Don't delude yourself into thinking that just because everyone else is getting away with it that it's okay or that you will never be caught. There is a risk, however minimal it may appear to be, and you have to factor that risk into your decision before going down the road of extensive reciprocal linking.
A site with 500+ reciprocal links can pass a hand check. My site has.
How exactly do you know this?
[webmasterworld.com...]
You know.... I guess that was a few years ago.
A site with 500+ reciprocal links can pass a hand check.
My guess would be that two factors are working in this site's favor:
1) The reciprocal links are clearly relevant.
2) The site has lots of endorsement from other links that aren't reciprocal.
500 reciprocal links won't impress Google much if that's all you've got for links. Those same reciprocal links will be much less problematic if they're part of a much broader link profile.
I'm not so sure that a site with several hundred relevant recips couldn't pass a hand check.
A well aged site might easily have accumulated several hundred relevant unsolicited recips over time.
The difference would be the time spread between when the links appeared, and maybe the ratio of recips to one way links.
There is a world of difference between arranged and natural reciprocal links when it comes to time frames.
Ever get a link request that says something like, "Hey link to me today and I'll link to you next year?"
Of course not.
But it's entirely possible that over time two sites will independently decide to link to the other because they see it as a good resource for their visitors.
It's also possible that after months, maybe even years, a webmaster will notice referrals coming through an unsolicited one way link from some site, take a look at the linking site, and link back to it.
A "hand check" that doesn't allow for that kind of unsolicited reciprocal links isn't worthy of the name.
Sure, pop up 500 arranged recips in a month, relevant or not and you may have trouble in the future.
Over a long time frame, I don't know. How would the % of relevant recips vs one way links to a site come into play?
About 30% of the links in the directory link back to me. That means that 70% do not. They opted not to add my link
Of the links in the directory, about 10% of them I added just for informational purposes. These were added just for my users. In the "hunting" analogy, these would be all the DNR offices for each state, where to get hunting licenses, some major manufacturers of guns, ammo and clothing. Some big sites related to hunting and some other forums I found useful.
Of all the incoming links, about 25% were unsolicited... in other words, I did not ask for them. They are in the form of blogs, news articles and other forum posts. Some even deep link to very specific information.
Of those 25%, I would say about 30% of those are from sites that are out there just scraping content. If you go back to the "hunting" analogy... if there is a post in the forum that says something like, "Me and a bunch of my friends jumped in a truck and headed out hunting up in Northern Maine..." etc... that actual post will suddenly be listed on pages that are selling cars, looking for penpals, or offering services in Maine.
Go Figure. What I don't understand... do these types of sites actually benefit anyone?
Any reputable webmaster that really wants me to link to him will contact me with a simple contact link. They do not need a form or text to point that out. And if his or her website is good, I will link to it without needing a link back.
I have had many sites link to mine without anything back. It does exist, but very very rare... Most new webmasters are hungry for links and to a certain degree, very desperate, and this type of link building only takes place over time.
The only reason to WANT to wade through 95% spam link requests IMHO is if your intention is to build links to the purpose of better rankings, in which case, I would simply contact the top 10 ranking websites for various searches in my own genre, email them each individually or call them by phone, and get high quality links that are really going to matter, still avoiding the excess spam that comes with a link exchange form.
I think that many sites that require/want links, don’t actually deserve them based on their appearance and what they have to offer. When you have an authority type of site, it gets easier.
Having said of all of this, reciprocal linking is getting done by automated programs, and low wage workers, it’s not surprising, that the quality is shocking.
