Reciprocal links - unrelated content but appropriate

Are reciprocal links hurting me despite their validity?

[eCaptivate]

I have read a number of SEO boards but just have not seen this issue addressed:

I have a web design business, so it is perfectly natural for me to have portfolio links to my clients' sites. Likewise, I have links on their sites back to my mine (using anchor text like "website design by").

The problem that I see is that the search engines are not likely to see any content correlation between a web design shop and a coffee shop, bakery, clothing store, etc.

So I fear that my reciprocal links will be discarded - or worse, penalized - as appearing suspicious.

My questions are:

1) If I added a "nofollow" to the links from my site, would my site gain more from the now one-way links (at the expense of my clients SEO efforts?)

2) If I did this, would this be ethical business-wise?

Many thanks to anyone who may have an informed opinion on this matter.

Michael

[cnvi]

You wont be hurt by irrelevant links unless thats all you have. And then the kind of hurt depends on the volume and trend rate in which you obtained the links. If you have 500 links and 450 are totally irrelevant, and you obtained those links over a long period of time, you may not get any credit for them. But you won't be penalized either.

If you obtain 10000 irrelevant reciprocal links in a very short period of time, yes it may penalize you although I rarely see this anymore. It simply won't help you.

It's normal and natural to have some links that may appear to be somewhat irrelevant (as you described above in your post).

No need to add nofollow.. if you do some webmasters will not link to you because they will think you are up to games. You don't want to add friction. No follow was designed for forums and blogs where comments can be made to artificially affect link popularity. There is no reason to use is on your links and resources pages.

Don't overthink this. If a site that benefits your end users wants to link with you, GET THE LINK regardless of the other site's PR or other metrics. As long as you are getting your links in a natural rate you have nothing to worry about.

[eCaptivate]

Thanks - This was helpful, but it did not address my specific situation, which is that *I have complete control* over the linking sites as they are my clients and I designed and currently manage their entire domains. So I could place the link, change the anchor text, remove the link, or add nofollow as I choose. Likewise, I can modify the links on my own site that link to theirs in any way that I choose, including the nofollow attribute.

So my questions are: would I benefit in engineering only one-way links back to my site rather than reciprocal (and it would be slow growth, as you pointed out) and, if so, would that be dishonorable to my clients, in your opinion?

[cnvi]

Most webmasters are hip to the whole no follow scam in order to engineer one ways. Link management softwares will also detect the nofollow and alert the webmaster to it. You should avoid this game.

Why do you seem to think one ways are more important than reciprocals? Because you read it somewhere? dont believe everything you read on the web.

If a quality site wants a link from you, ask for a link back. There is nothing wrong with reciprocals. The whole mantra "you must have one way links" is tired and not very realistic. It's well known that many websites will not link to you without something in return. Reciprocals are safer than paid links.

If you are so focused on generating one way links, here is a tip that works: Publish a form on your site soliciting relevant links or use an editor based software that publishes the form for you. Websites that want to link with your site will fill out the form in anticipation that you will agree and publish their link. Many webmasters who initiate the link request will link to your site first in anticipation that you are going to link back (first person to ask is typically the first to link). In alot of cases, the website will link to yours and if you decide not to link back, you just got the one way link. Yes they might remove it later but that does not always happen.

You don't want webmasters emailing your clients stating that you are playing games and being dishonest with the whole nofollow game. Best to leave out nofollow and get relevant links any way you can, reciprocals if needed.

[martinibuster]

You can no-follow the links to your client sites, but why link to them at all? If it's part of your portfolio then you can link to them with a JS link.

What you link out to says something about what you are relevant for. Linking out to B&B and eCommerce sites doesn't really demonstrate how you're relevant for web design keyword phrases. Unless those sites you link out to are heavily geographic, then linking out to them might help positively influence geographic longtail phrases related to web design. But even there that might be a stretch. You'd probably be better off linking to City Hall and the local chamber of commerce.

Back around 2003 Marissa Mayer from Google stated during an SES panel that a link from an irrelevant site would be deprecated, it wouldn't count as much. That went over the heads of the SES crowd but was a meaningful statement at the time to those who were able to understand the ramifications of it. I personally questioned her using the example of a web design firm with a dot edu backlink for web design and she affirmed that in that scenario the link would pass deprecated PageRank, that it wouldn't count as a full vote, asking rhetorically, "Why should it?"