SEO 2020 FORUM

[Sinkh]

Charles, I notice you include reciprocal linking as a big part of the daily Plan.

But it was my understanding that the usefulness of this is decreasing. I thought that Google and others only regard ONEWAY backlinks as a real "vote" for a site.

[glenny]

I was wondering the same thing. I am working my way through the seo friendly directory list and more than a few are now wanting a small payment for a one way non-reciprocal link.

If you reciprocate its free but otherwise not.

Is a reciprocal link better than none? With sites that have a common focus I could see the point, but having a links page full of unrelated (to my site) directory links, does that work against you? Or is any link better than no link??

Regards

Glenn

[jeremy]

If you do a link exchange with a related website it will help,
the more quality inbound links the better. Building links
is an ongoing process.

Jeremy

[alps6000]

I used to be the linkmetro.com for free member.when I put others links in my site.all my have been indexed pages got lost except the main page.So I get all the other links off form My site.After two days,My pages come back.So I prefer the article marketer's servise.

[aprilkerr]

Have a look here:

http://www.seomoz.org/articles/google-historical-data-patent.php

3. Spam Detection & Punishment
Google is employing many new systems of spam detection and prevention according to the patent. These include:

Watching for sites that rise in the rankings too quickly
Watching for registration information, IP addresses, name servers, hosts, etc that are on their "bad list"
Growth of off-topic links <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Speed of link gain
Percentage of similar anchor text
Topic/Subject shifts or additions


I'm not sure what to make of it all. When looking at the first two competing sites of my first site (jewellery shop) which I created nearly 2 years ago have conflicting results.

The first one has 57 backlins on MSN and a PR of only 2. I can't find any "link pages" on the site and in terms of SILO, this is pretty good with each type of jewellery and gift kept separate like mini-sites - linked only by a "HOME" link at the top of the page.

The second has 714 links and a PR of 5. They have a links page and link to various types of sites. For SILO, it looks OK. On the top of each item they have e.g. HOME > Jewellery Brand > Bracelet. This site used to be No.1 until a few months ago.

Both sites have been around for at least a couple of years.

The tactic I will be going for it articles, directories, possibly a press release and linking to related sites and having lots of subcategories like:

http://www.walshbrothers.co.uk/links/index.html

I'm also going to have it in a visible place so as not to appear fooling the SEs


April

[divine]

Aggressive reciprocal link campaigns (specially unrelated) can harm you. But, if you exchange links with sites related to your 'theme' that will only help you. (Note: Not just a page on the site should match your theme - but the entire site.) Keep in mind the following points:

1. Site should be 'relevant' and offer good value.
2. Build links at a decent rate and try to be consistent.
3. Not only get links - but also add *unique* content regularly (this is important).
4. Finally, while building links it is very important to think out of the box. You can get links from content pages, blog posts etc. (not only typical links pages) (hint: goto www.ilovelinks.org)

Building healthy relationships with webmasters in your theme is a must! (see yahoo webmaster guidelines)

[davemoore]

"if you exchange links with sites related to your 'theme' that will only help you."
I believe this is totally correct... without going technical I will paraphrase a friend of mine that explained it in the simplest of terms - SE's are are used to seeing reciprocal links, don't disappoint them, but don't rely on that as your only source of link building.
IMO a good rule of thumb = make recips about 1/4 of your linking campaign or less.
-Dave

[Linkman]

A lot of what has been said here is true - reciprocal linking can hurt you but not necessarily.

Also, as was mentioned, when you do need to have reciprocal links, ensure they are relevant to your site, preferrably in a related industry. But they don't have to be industry specific. You can pepper in a few local reciprocal links too (local geographically I mean - such as chambers of commerce, local TV station, newspaper etc.)

Consider link building as a strategy and not a tactic. You need to have the right links pointing to the right places in your site. If you can plan out the types of links you need to find, and scope out a timeline for capturing those links you will be more successful overall.

That means, don't just target certain sites or certain keywords. If you build 100 links on the same keyphrase, the engines will figure out pretty quickly what you are doing and may begin penalizing some links or not counting them at all.

On the same note, don't build links just to your home page - in order for your linking strategy to appear natural you need to link to internal pages too. Therefore, if you are doing link building whenever possible, either submit deep pages as well, or in some cases only submit the deeper page and skip a link to the homepage.

Remember, your link building MUST LOOK NATURAL!! But what's natural?

Well no one knows for sure, but to me natural is when your links appear to point to various pages throughout your site from related sites with different PageRank values.