41 replies to this topic

[jeeseo]

Hello There,

I want to make reciprocal link page for reciprocal linking purpose.
How to make reciprocal linking page search engine friendly so my site can not get penalized in Search Engines?

If i categorise them into suitable category like directories....... Is it OK?

Any suggestion?

[chrishirst]

Do whatever you want with them, it's your site.

Doesn't matter one bit, if you link to what the SEs consider a bad site your site will get penalised no matter how nice your pages look.

[CurveBall]

Hello There,

I want to make reciprocal link page for reciprocal linking purpose.
How to make reciprocal linking page search engine friendly so my site can not get  penalized in Search Engines?

If i categorise them into suitable category like directories....... Is it OK?

Any suggestion?

You can have one main page ..Resources or links
Within that page you can either have sub pages, if you have many links, or categories...but try and make it look that it is not just a list...i.e. include a bit of description

[KSA]

Hi,

Here are the ground rules I follow:

--Don't put more than 50 links on any one page
--Set up categories/pages before you start exchanging links - if you move reciprocal links, it will just confuse your link partners. And, most people want to see your link pages are cached.
--Only exchange with sites that are directly related to the content of your website. Your link pages should provide information to your visitors, not just the search engines.
--Check potential link partners before you exchange to verify that their site is a quality site related to yours, and that their link pages can be found from their home page, and that their links aren't 302 redirects or other weird things, and that they follow this same list of ground rules for exchanges.
--Put some content on the page that relates to the category. For example, I work with a number of sites that have categories for different states. I add some state trivia for each of the states on the page.
--Never use the word Link in your page titles, description, keywords, or content

Think that's about it. Hope it helps.

Kathleen

[chrishirst]

Create a page using ur home page template and name it as "resources" and not "links"

Design how you want, Name it how you want and how it makes sense from a site management point of view and for real visitors

donot put more than 20 outbound links on each page

Put as many links on the page as you need but again look at it from a visitors POV and not create something totally confusing

try to insert as many categories and sub-categories as possible, which ofcourse are relevant to your site theme and content

Split the links into sensible categories that once again will make sense to real visitors.

make sure meta tags are different for each links page so that its rightly indexed

probably not worth answering this given the number of threads we have mentioning how meta tags do not help with rankings

[chrishirst]

Put as many links as you want and it'll end up being a "link farm"

Nope, it may look a mess, but it won't be a link farm.
A link farm is where every member of the scheme has to host the same pages which link to every other member site.

but "resources" is a lesser used keyword than "links" and this is well known

"lesser used keyword" and "well known"?
Sorry you'll need to explain your reasoning here.

well no you can create your own meta tags if you wish but they will have no meaning beyond your own use. meta keywords are only used by Yahoo (in a limited fashion) and some small engines used by less than .5% of searchers. And for a set of links page using the same meta description for them all won't matter one iota.

[Randy]

umm... Where's my Jill hat?

1. re: link farm

Wrong. A link farm has nothing whatsoever to do with a single page. Put as many links on the page as you want, that is good for visitors. As Chris already said.

Google says to try to keep it below 100 links per page. 100 links on a page is so far outside the bounds of what one should do for real visitors it's a non-issue. 20, 50, 40, 60, 8. It doesn't matter.

2. Naming the page. Links vs Resources makes no difference. Name it whatever would make sense to your visitors.

3. Meta tags have been abused into oblivion. Which is why Google doesn't even look at the meta keywords tag anymore. They will sometimes use your meta description in their snippet, but there is no evidence that it helps or hurts ranking.

Darn, maybe I should have just copied Chris' post above and reposted it!

[Jill]

Netconsultingpalace, seriously...when are you going to read the Tips for Newbies articles that we directed you to a few days ago?

It would really clear up a lot of the confusion and misinformation you seem to have gotten from somewhere.

I'd suggest that you stop reading at where ever else it is you've been reading, because you've been learning a lot of nonsense. I'm sure it's not too late to turn things around for you though if you spend a few weeks going through the real true stuff instead of the myths.

[justicewhite]

I feel this thread might be a long one as the reciprocal linking is a contencious subject.

I have been reading a lot lately about G decreasing the weight of the reciprocal links. Some people even claim that their experiments support this claim. Personally, I believe the reciprocal linking has been over-used lately so if you're just starting out your link building work, you may want to consider how much you'd like to depend on the reciprocals.

Good luck with your site.

[Bompa]

Hi,

Here are the ground rules I follow:

--Don't put more than 50 links on any one page
--Set up categories/pages before you start exchanging links - if you move reciprocal links, it will just confuse your link partners.  And, most people want to see your link pages are cached.
--Only exchange with sites that are directly related to the content of your website.  Your link pages should provide information to your visitors, not just the search engines.
--Check potential link partners before you exchange to verify that their site is a quality site related to yours, and that their link pages can be found from their home page, and that their links aren't 302 redirects or other weird things, and that they follow this same list of ground rules for exchanges.
--Put some content on the page that relates to the category.  For example, I work with a number of sites that have categories for different states.  I add some state trivia for each of the states on the page.
--Never use the word Link in your page titles, description, keywords, or content

Think that's about it.  Hope it helps.

Kathleen

Thanks Kathy for sharing your checklist.

I think this is actually a pretty "standard" checklist, in that, this is what I see
most often suggested, so in that sense, it should be on the safe side.

However, personally speaking, I can not imagine going through that checklist
for every site with which I might link, but that's just me, I'm lazy.

If you take this checklist as a "standard" or "common" set of ground rules, there
are still some things that can be varied, as others have said.

Regarding the links/page, two things to consider. 1. Eye appeal. 2. Links water
down the PageRank being passed to the remote site. Too many and some
webmasters might not want to link with you. Otherwise, it does not matter.

Linking *only* to sites that are directly related to you could limit your links and
I don't believe it's a necessity. After all, natural linking is said to be the best,
yet you have no control over the relatedness of them.

Putting content on the links page is a good thing. Best way imo is to get a nice
long description from the remote site. That should make them happy and put
more keywords on your links page. Most link input forms drastically limit the
description field, (cuz they saw someone else do that).


Well, I use "link" all the time because my site is about link exchanges, heh.

For others, I don't know if the using "link" as the anchored text is bad or not,
probably not, but who cares? Better to use a keyword!


Bompa

Edited by Bompa, 30 November 2005 - 04:08 AM.

[Bompa]

Hello There,

I want to make reciprocal link page for reciprocal linking purpose.
How to make reciprocal linking page search engine friendly so my site can not get  penalized in Search Engines?

If i categorise them into suitable category like directories....... Is it OK?

Any suggestion?

oops, I got so wrapped up in that checklist, I forgot to answer the original
quesion.

You can organize your link pages any way you want or put them all on one page
that is a mile long.

Google is not human. Google has no brain and can not recognize "organization".

Googlebot will just download your page of links and go on to it's next task.


Bompa

[sufyaaan]

Do whatever you want with them, it's your site. Doesn't matter one bit.

I tend to disagree. There are things we should follow as best practices while (building) link exchange (pages). Take a look at tools.devshed.com/c/a/Affiliate-Promotion/15-Link-Exchange-Tips

if you link to what the SEs consider a bad site your site will get penalised no matter how nice your pages look.

Almost all major SEs won't penalize your site simply because you are linking to a site that is either a 'banned' one or a part of a possible 'bad neighborhood'.

The problem arises when you are linking to it :

- from your home page,
- from a main page (that is internally strongly linked to and) has a few outbound links,
- whether your are not using 'nofollow' attribute on your anchor tags for outbound links etc.

Moreover, if your site is one of the authority sites in your niche, SEs won't penalize it for linking to bad neighborhood. Just my 2 cents.

[chrishirst]

it's things like this that annoy me

This will not benefit your customers or visitors and the search engines may penalize your website for this.

Now who the has the right to tell me this? If I want to link my site (ie: about gardening) to a site about portable radios, chemical toilets or motorbikes it's absolutely my right to do so and NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY SEARCH ENGINES
This is the kind of ill-informed crap that has every newbie and many webmasters scared to do anything at all.
AAAAGGGGHHH!! ok rant over.

It's all down to that very rare commodity "common sense". Link to a site that you wouldn't mind your visitors seeing and you can't go far wrong

and this

- from your home page,
- from a main page (that is internally strongly linked to and) has a few outbound links,
- whether your are not using 'nofollow' attribute on your anchor tags for outbound links etc.

Makes absolutely no difference at all especially the last one.
Using no-follow on your own choice of links??? what does that say apart from "I don't trust my own judgement"