A few of my recent posts have put a somewhat negative light on reciprocal linking and in today’s post I wanted to fully explain my position on reciprocal links.
There are Lot’s of ideas on reciprocal linking some of them are fine others can actually cause your site to be penalised, let me run through the 3 main types of reciprocal links…Starting with the BAD.
So they did this by creating a links page on their sites and sent a link to the homepage of the reciprocal site. The Reciprocal site would then return the favour from their links page.
It looked a little something like this;
Now these link pages could sometimes have hundreds of links on them and it did not take long for the search engines to figure them out. The links were quickly devalued and the sites lost their rank.
If you have a links resources page on your site, don’t panic. As long as your not using it to create a reciprocal directory then it is natural.
This type of linking is set up for the prime purpose of manipulating the search results and PageRank algorithm, my advice would be to stay well away as it is not uncommon for sites to receive penalties for it.
Reciprocal links to directories, including blog directories are plain ugly and will pass little if any real value to a site. This also includes mass blogroll lists.
Now before you simply click the back button, hear me out.
If you have reasonable amount of these links it is going to make no difference however if you find your homepage has over 30 of these types of links your site may start to suffer. I have not seen sites penalised for this sort of linking but have seen link juice completely run dry.
Let’s think about this logically;
Does the above link profile look natural to you? Remember what Google wants is to award links based on credit worthy content. If your linking to loads of exchange directories or to a long list of blogging friends, these are not awarded based on quality content, they’re based on relationships.
Your blogging buddies may have quality content on their sites/blogs, but why are you exchanging links? If it’s based purely on a relationship this is not something Google will want to use to base their rankings on.
Again I will say there is nothing wrong with a hand full of these types of links, but having a long reciprocal link list in your side bar is simply ugly and will do you no favours in the search engines.
If you come across content that is highly relevant and similar to something on your own site you may want to link to it, you may also want to send a link to the homepage of the site that published the content. YOU MAY…. even want to contact the site owner and say
“hey loved that article you have published, I published something on my site that backs up your opinion, you may want to link to it”.
This could result in a link pattern like so;
This type of linking is perfectly legitimate because it is natural and the links have been awarded based on quality, relevant content.
If a manual review was to take place the above linking pattern would not stand out at all, where as the other two would stand out like sore thumbs!
So if your thinking about a link exchange ask yourself the following questions;
There are Lot’s of ideas on reciprocal linking some of them are fine others can actually cause your site to be penalised, let me run through the 3 main types of reciprocal links…Starting with the BAD.
The BAD
These are the type of links that caused all the real estate problems back in 2007/08. Site owners were contacting other real estate site owners in different parts of the country and offering to exchange links and using anchor text for the sole purpose of increasing PageRank and Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Rank.So they did this by creating a links page on their sites and sent a link to the homepage of the reciprocal site. The Reciprocal site would then return the favour from their links page.
It looked a little something like this;
Now these link pages could sometimes have hundreds of links on them and it did not take long for the search engines to figure them out. The links were quickly devalued and the sites lost their rank.
If you have a links resources page on your site, don’t panic. As long as your not using it to create a reciprocal directory then it is natural.
This type of linking is set up for the prime purpose of manipulating the search results and PageRank algorithm, my advice would be to stay well away as it is not uncommon for sites to receive penalties for it.
The UGLY
I’m sure people are not going to like me for what I’m about to say but this is my opinion based on personal experiences.Reciprocal links to directories, including blog directories are plain ugly and will pass little if any real value to a site. This also includes mass blogroll lists.
Now before you simply click the back button, hear me out.
If you have reasonable amount of these links it is going to make no difference however if you find your homepage has over 30 of these types of links your site may start to suffer. I have not seen sites penalised for this sort of linking but have seen link juice completely run dry.
Let’s think about this logically;
Does the above link profile look natural to you? Remember what Google wants is to award links based on credit worthy content. If your linking to loads of exchange directories or to a long list of blogging friends, these are not awarded based on quality content, they’re based on relationships.
Your blogging buddies may have quality content on their sites/blogs, but why are you exchanging links? If it’s based purely on a relationship this is not something Google will want to use to base their rankings on.
Again I will say there is nothing wrong with a hand full of these types of links, but having a long reciprocal link list in your side bar is simply ugly and will do you no favours in the search engines.
The GOOD
Finally the good, the way reciprocal links can work and pass real benefits to your site.If you come across content that is highly relevant and similar to something on your own site you may want to link to it, you may also want to send a link to the homepage of the site that published the content. YOU MAY…. even want to contact the site owner and say
“hey loved that article you have published, I published something on my site that backs up your opinion, you may want to link to it”.
This could result in a link pattern like so;
This type of linking is perfectly legitimate because it is natural and the links have been awarded based on quality, relevant content.
If a manual review was to take place the above linking pattern would not stand out at all, where as the other two would stand out like sore thumbs!
So if your thinking about a link exchange ask yourself the following questions;
- Am I exchanging to point my readers to a useful, relevant resource?
- Will I still award a link even if I don’t get one back?
- Is the page the link is pointing to a relevant quality resource?
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