Ok I thought this sort of speculation was a thing of the past because so many SEO websites, gurus, and bloggers have covered this topic that I guess I thought everyone knew the answer but it seems not everyone knows so I will try to cover the topic. The question?

Does Google discount reciprocal linking or is having a link from your website to your blog bad for SEO?

Ok I am going to answer this question in a number of ways because there are a variety of reasons this is just a bad idea. Some people have been suggesting that you don’t want a link from your website to your blog and this is a really bad idea.

If you want a simple answer yes link your website to your blog and link it to every single thing you do on the internet or every place you have a social network profile. Link it every place that you want your website visitors to see you. You will have more traffic to all of your sites and all of your profiles if they are all interconnected. Why? Because you make it easy for people to navigate between them and cutting this link is a bad bad bad bad idea.

Bad Impressions and Misnomers of PageRank

First of all some people have this impression that Google takes a look at two websites and if they are linking back and forth that the two links are heavily discounted or completely wiped away when you are talking about SEO. This is just not true. I thought it was true because I have read a number of posts saying its true but it’s not. I think this stems from a misunderstanding of PageRank. This may be partially true if your website only consists of a single page because then if you look at how PageRank works it is possible that having thousands of links pointing to the one page might increase its PageRank. So take a look at the diagrams below.

This is still a very simple diagram of how PageRank works and your website and pages is probably far more complex than this.

This diagram is what it might look like if your website only had one page and it’s not linking to anything.

First of all I can’t draw to save my life. Secondly this last scenario is impossible. This would mean that you have only a single page for a website, no internal structure IE a menu with page navigation and that your website does not link to any other sites on the internet. If your site did any of that then it is sending page rank to the inner pages. This concept is impossible and it would make it a boring site. It would be the end of the line if the internet were a railroad and it would perhaps be one of the worst sites on the internet. The only way to have content would be to keep the page scrolling down the bottom to infinity and believe me no one would read it or care and most people would click off in a heartbeat. So put a fork into this concept that you can design a website that completely absorbs page rank because it’s done.

Another misnomer of PageRank is that getting high PageRank sites to link to you is better than getting low PageRank sites. Well that is true but there’s a but. This assumes of course that the high PageRank site has only one link. How many sites do you know of like that? None. Almost all of the high PageRank sites link to millions of other sites, just as millions of other sites link to that site. Yes in theory this is something to want and get but in practice it’s all but impossible. Having hundreds or thousands of low page ranking sites such as blog posts link to your site is achievable. Try to get as many links from as many sources as possible but don’t worry if they are high PageRank or not. Just try to get the links. There basically is no such thing as a bad link. If Google doesn’t want to count a link there isn’t much you can do about it and Google does not reprimand someone for the sites that they are being linked from. It may punish you for the sites you link to but it doesn’t punish you for the sites that are linking to you.

Furthermore when we are talking about these linking strategies we are talking about ways of increasing PageRank because PageRank is a measure of the number and quality of links. A lot of people think that PageRank is one of the most important aspects of SEO and having a high PageRank would seem to be the answer to how a page ranks highly. So many people try to have a higher page rank thinking it will help them rank better. Well it’s not true. PageRank has little bearing on why a page ranks highly or not. It does help some but there are much more important things to be working on such as good anchor text in the links and having good on page SEO. As much as you might try to sculpt the perfect link scheme to increase your PageRank mostly this is a complete waste of time. You will never have B. Just be happy with A.  You will get far more traffic if you make it easy for people to go between your sites.

Ok so I hope I have dispelled this myth that somehow you can have perfect PageRank.

Does Google discount reciprocal links?

No. Not quite. PageRank is the measure of inbound links and the quality of those links. It does measure somewhat the outbound links but since you are always going to have outbound links worrying about this is just a waste of your energy. Isn’t the point of SEO to have more traffic? So why shoot yourself in the foot here? Having your sites interconnected keeps your visitors longer on your sites.  Give them a reason to stay and show them all that you have. Even if you are linking to another site you are making your own site more relevant to the visitor.

Actually there is a lot of evidence to the contrary that Google likes links that go to relevant sites, that is sites that are relational in content or subject matter. It also gives your visitors more information and other sites that might answer their question in a search query or just show that you can provide relevant information. Rule #1 of SEO is never worry about what Google might want and always worry about your visitors. You need to put SEO on the back burner when it comes to this subject. Regardless if it’s good for SEO you should be worrying about your visitors. But in this case you are helping both.

So now we know why this is bad SEO. So why is this good SEO?

Next up is why you should interconnect things or how this works as good SEO and helps your visitors.

Interconnecting

I am going to skip landing pages or the thousands of ways people get to your site and giving them more places to go is important but it’s a long topic so let’s just pretend they can only get to your home page from the internet.

Ok so a person lands on your home page and what do they do? First of all if they are coming from Google they are probably looking for the answer to their search query. Basically someone asks Google a question such as what homes are for sale and they want an answer. Everything you do on your site is trying to answer every possible question that someone might ask, that is if you are designing a good site. So providing every possible answer seems like a tough order to fill and you do this by providing good content. You help them make it easy to navigate your site (a good menu) and you want to provide them relevant sources.  If you are thinking back to 1990ish SEO the bells and whistles might be going off in your head saying “no wait! I don’t want them to leave my site!!! STAAAAaaaAAAAaaaY!!!” Well that’s an old way of looking at things. What you really want visitors on your site to be able to do, like I said above, is to provide every possible answer. The more relevant sources you can provide the more valuable your site is to visitors. They will come back because your site has all the answers. While you might be leaking PageRank you are making a much more valuable resource for your visitors. Your site is a resource and a wealthy resource is one that people might link to. The gold mine of having good content and a great site is that people will naturally link to it (organic SEO.) So start mining. Dig a few tunnels to help them out. Shine a light and hand them a pickaxe.

Interconnecting also can show off what it is you do or other ways people can connect to you. Want your visitors to be your friend on FaceBook? Then why wouldn’t you link to your account from your website? Not only does a high powered link from your website to your account their increase the ranking of your FaceBook profile (my account actually shows up if someone is looking for the term real estate agent in my town) it also increases your social networking circle. So link away! Link to all those sites and never look back.

You are a blogger right? So why wouldn’t you show off your work on your blog? It makes no sense not to show visitors your blog. After all, you are putting in all that work don’t you want consumers to see it? You want people landing on your blog to see your website and you want people landing on your website to see your blog. The end of the road for every blog post should be your website. From a link building stand point you want every post to point to your website and you want every visitor to be able to clearly see your website. Because isn’t one of the reasons of blogging to increase the traffic to your site? It is trust me!

A high powered link

Another aspect of linking to your other sites and profiles is that you are sending a high powered link there. As it works for your FaceBook account it works for every site you link to. Yes you are lowering the value of each link that you link to so this isn’t a reason to go crazy and literally link to 1000 different sites but a few good links is a great idea. Again think of your visitors. You probably don’t want to literally send them to every single possible account from your home page but the more valuable ones to your visitors is probably a good idea. You can create a page such as a contact page further in your site and then maybe link to all these accounts from there. That’s not a bad idea.

Exposure

Half the battle of becoming a successful blogger is getting more exposure. Expose yourself to your clients (maybe not literally.) Your blog should stick out to people visiting your site and it should be like a flashing neon light saying click me! Every person coming to your site should see it. Make it visual and whatever else you need to do to make this happen. The page should scream “I AM A BLOGGER!!!!” Your website and your blog are interrelated. They should each be rubbing each other’s back and working off each other. A good blog enhances your website and a good website enhances your blog. If you write a good post about where they can find homes for sale then it makes sense to send them to your website to find more information.

Smart Cookies

There are probably hundreds of other reasons to be linking from your blog to your website and vice versa. But here is one more for the road. The AR staff is a bunch of smart cookies (no I am not just trying to suck up.) When they designed this site they knew the rules of good SEO. They knew that relevant links from a blog to your website (link building) would help out your website. They have encouraged this from the start. They also know that having more people link to Active Rain would in turn help out AR. The more links the better and they even offered points to do this. Some people accuse AR of being selfish but it’s just not true. The more you help AR’s own PageRank the more you help yourself. Huuuuhhhh? One of the elements of a strong link is a link from a high page rank site. The higher the better. If you build up AR’s PageRank and then send links to your site you are helping yourself to some of that good stuff: the juice! You lika the juice right? (SNL Reference) More juice is good for everyone. They didn’t just offer points for linking to AR for nothing (sorry they don’t anymore) and it’s a win-win for everyone.

No matter how you look at it you want to link to your blog from your website. Not doing so is bad on so many levels I can’t honestly see why someone would suggest it.

If you have something to say please leave a comment. I will try to comment on your blog as well.
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