Is Reciprocal Linking Dead Options

[ChildeRoland]

Is there truth to the rumors that Reciprocal linking is dead. I've even heard that google will now punish you for continuing Reciprocal link trading. There can't be truth to that, but I figured I'd ask. If it's true i've wasted a lot of time over the course of the last few months trading 1000's of links.

[donp]

I'm betting it is.....
Inbound links from non-relevant sources are going the way of the dodo bird and rightfully so. Link exchanges just for the sake of it are becoming virtually meaningless, but if, say you have a medical site and an inbound link from a hospital site, it has to be worth more than an inbound link from a car hire in the U.K. I don't think you are neccessarrily "punished", but I'd bet the search engines are placing less reliance on this type of linking as time goes on.
I quite often look at SEO from the perspective of the other side, as if I were a search engine with literally billions of dollars at stake - I'd know that delivering relevant results was my bread and butter, so I would define the best way to do it.
Common sense tells me unrelated links are less important than related or relevant links. It's not rocket science.

Welcome to the forum, you will learn a lot of valuable info from some helpful and very competent professionals.

This post has been edited by donp: May 31 2006, 07:51 AM

[ChildeRoland]

So you are saying that as long as the reciprocal links that we're exchanging are relevant, then we're still in the clear and we wouldn't be wasting our time. That's good because we've never been in the businesses of exchanging non-relevant links. We've always made sure that the websites we exchange links with are within the realm of web design, hosting, seo and marketing.

So Recip Linking isn't dead, it's just Recip Linking like a moron is then right?

[Martin C]

Google's official version

When I do a link: search, the results don't include all the links to my site. How can I tell you about the other links?

A search using the link: operator returns only a sampling of pages that link to a site. It doesn't include the full list we know about. We find links to your site through our regular crawling mechanisms, so there's no need to tell us separately. Keep in mind that our algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural links.

Natural links are links to your site that develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other sites find your content valuable and think it would be helpful for their visitors. Unnatural links are links to your site placed there specifically to make your site look more popular to search engines. Some of these types of links are covered in our webmaster guidelines:

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines.

In general, linking to web spammers and "bad neighborhoods" can harm your site's indexing and ranking. And while links from these sites won't harm your site, they won't help your indexing or ranking. Only natural links add value and are helpful for indexing and ranking your site.

[webpromoter]

I don't think Google can penalize link exchanges without penalizing a lot of legitimate sites and causing an uproar. Apart from search engine rankings, link exchanges are still a viable source of direct referral traffic.

[Scottie]

Here is something I wrote recently on the issue: Reciprocal Linking vs Mutual Linking

[Michael Martinez]

I don't think Google can penalize link exchanges without penalizing a lot of legitimate sites and causing an uproar.  Apart from search engine rankings, link exchanges are still a viable source of direct referral traffic.

Since they have caused uproars in the past, I don't think Google is afraid to cause an uproar now.

They are under no obligation to stand aside and do nothing while people manipulate their search results. They have every right to adjust their index as they see fit, just as you have every right to handle your content as you see fit and every right to link to whomever you please.

Somewhere in the middle may be a happy medium many people can find together, but not everyone wants to be there.

[Debra]

So Recip Linking isn't dead, it's just Recip Linking like a moron is then right?

Cute one Ted and fairly accurate as you could say that of any linking technique as well!

Swap links with sites in your niche and keep it to a minimum. Work with your partner sites and have them link into your website rather than just your home page.

Offer the best anchor text when linking and be sure it compliments the page it's pointing to for maximum effect.

Don't make swapping links the only linking thing you do, incorporate multiple tactics.

Reciprocal linking isn't dead, merely the poster child for stupid linking if it's all you do.

[Michael Martinez]

Find the courage to just link out without requiring or asking people to link back. Be a useful resource that your visitors want to return to.

You'll get the kinds of links you need if you just trust people to appreciate your growing store of good content.

[Cosita]

Work with your partner sites and have them link into your website rather than just your home page.

What is the difference?

[torka]

I think Debra's talking about deep linking -- have them link directly to pages of relevant content rather than having all inbound links point to your home page.

--Torka (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)

[Cosita]

Oh got it. Thanks.

[rohgan03]

What is the difference?

If its natural linking, there will be links to your deeper pages and not just all links pointing to the home page with same anchor text....think about it!

[bertifuel]

Hi All,

I run a travel directory and I'm always surprised about the amount of cr*p links people are trying to submit. Keyword stuffing, automated link submissions and other brainless tactics show me that most people don't have a clue what a good (reciprocal) linking strategy is and how search engines work. Reciprocal linking is indeed not rocket science, but it IS science in the sense that you need to do your (keyword) research and use your brains.

The first and most important thing most marketeers don't get is that a search engine is trying to understand human language, trying to evolve to a level where they understand :
1) the meaning of words in certain situations (like the word Apple; computer or fruit?) or the semantic differences and resemblances of keywords (holiday = vacation) See also: Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
2) the direction or intention of searchers (Bus from Chicago or Bus to Chicago; Map New York = Map of New York = New York Map)
3) translations of keywords in other languages.

So far, you could say that Google (or any other search engine) is operating at the level of an 10-year old. It lacks abstract thinking, complex human language strategies and is bound to concrete reality (the content). Though a search engine is a genius in remembering information, it's still learning to understand the relationship between words and phrases. A search engine doesn't understand humor for example: 'That joke killed me' is taken very literally by search engines. So for now (and the coming years) a search engine's strongest strategy is to cluster keywords with semantic resemblances. That's why you need to do research with tools like Adwords Keyword Suggestion or a Thesaurus to find synonyms and antonyms.

Back to reciprocal linking:
1) I have a website about travel. Why is a reciprocal link from (and to) another site about travel more relevant than a reciprocal link with a site about farm products?
Answer: the content of the farm products site does not (semantically) match with the content in the anchor text. Also, the content of the farm products site does not match with the content of your site. Hence, a search engine will treat this link as a false positive.

2) I have a website about travel and want to exchange links with another site about travel. What's the best strategy?
Answer: match the anchor text keywords (and the description around the link, if any) with the keywords of the page you want to promote. You can either choose to use the exact keyword phrase (New York Travel), reverse keyword phrase (New York travel -> travel New York) or a semantically equal keyword phrase (vacation New York or holiday NY). Place that link on the other travel site on a page that closely resembles the content of your link (like a page about New York in this example). Help the other site by placing his link on your website in the same way. This will help you BOTH to get high rankings (yes indeed; well organized outgoing links can also help YOUR rankings). Try to use unique descriptions for each (reciprocal) link. A lot of work? Maybe. But it's worth a thousand junk links.

3) I automatically submitted my link to several directories with my main keywords (see below) but it doesn't get listed. Why?

'adventure tours for the Huayhuash, Cordillera Blanca Huaraz, Choquequirao Trek in Cusco, Inka Trail trek to Machupicchu.' (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/appl.gif)

Answer:
A. Automated submissions do not provide unique content and will be quickly identified by a search engine as being spam (because all the links are the same, so it must be unnatural linking). Mostly these automated submissions are not well targeted and will only be accepted by junk-directories (with no human editor).

B. The link description above is pure keyword stuffing and it lacks respect for internet users. The only intention of this link is to rank high for the keywords mentioned. Even a 6-year old could do this (and remember, a search engine operates on the level of a 10-year old, so you'll always lose! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/yahoo.gif) )

C. Never use only keywords in link descriptions (I'm not talking about anchor text here). Always use sentences. This will automatically create a good keyword density and actually be read by searchers. Besides that, your link will mostly be accepted by directories (unless your site is junk off course. In that case forget about this whole message and please continue to spam the search engines and other directories (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/nah.gif) ).


Have fun!

<edit to remove live links per [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules]Forum Rules[/url]>

This post has been edited by torka: Jun 8 2006, 09:06 AM

[ToolInventor]

Bad reciprocal linking is coming to its end.

Good, quality and relevant reciprocal linking as always is fine, and most probably will last fine for a very long period of time. Can Google say NO to exchanging links between two online businesses in the niche? Never.

Listen to Matt Cutts - is he saying that recip links are dead? No. He says, IRRELEVANT links will make it a bad thing for your site. That's it.

Plus, Matt says that if all the links on your site are recips - this can be bad. But you can always submit to directory, submit press releases and articles and use other means of getting one way links to your site.