Just Say No to Reciprocal Linking

Hi everybody! I just wanted to let you know that Anita has not been ignoring all of your great comments...she is on a well-deserved vacation! I am one of Anita's colleagues at Dynamic Page Solutions, and I want to help address some really interesting points a few of you have brought up:

Elizabeth--That is a good observation and makes a really important point about HubPages. HubPages doesn’t reward just any content with the coveted do-follow links. All your links will be no-follow until your overall hub score is 75 or higher. Even then, if your score drops below 75, the links will automatically convert back to no-follow. So, it’s important to post only high-quality hubs and keep them fresh!

Matthew--Unfortunately, only the search engines themselves truly know how they perceive reciprocal linking. We have to conduct our own research and testing to approximate the value/penalty for these things. That being said, we know that reciprocal linking is certainly monitored by the search engines and sites are penalized when they see something that they don’t like. Strategic reciprocal linking can be done safely in small quantities, but the benefit is minimal. Like DMTX.com (aka Julie) mentioned (http://activerain.com/blogsview/1513695/just-say-no-to-reciprocal-linking#6343581), search engines (Google in particular) tend to value sites with good content and a few high-quality links over the ones that have tons of reciprocal links. It’s always a good idea to balance your link-building sources. So, I guess that is the long way of saying to only reciprocate if it makes sense, not just for the acquisition of links, and don’t let reciprocal linking account for more than 10-15% of your overall back-linking…then, you shouldn’t be in danger of “overdoing it”.

Tim--Thanks! I couldn’t agree more. Providing quality content is essential for long-term rankings and is the best way to build a diverse, “white hat” inbound linking portfolio.

Corinne--Yes and no…inbound links can absolutely help promote your site and give it better rankings, but a total lack of outbound links can actually be detrimental. Google likes to see that websites are part of the “community”, so when a site doesn’t link to other resources in the community, they view it as essentially attempting to horde the traffic…and they don’t seem to like ranking these kinds of sites too highly. I typically recommend that Realtors link to schools, chamber of commerce, local parks and recreation, as well as any other non-competitive community resources. Don’t go crazy with outbound links, as you can drain any page rank that you have established. Be strategic in regards to how you link and from which pages—for example, don’t put the link in your global navigation because it will then be an outbound link from every page of your site.

Leah--Quality, relevant links reciprocated sparingly should not get you in trouble.

Brian--I will try to clarify:

1) Using strategic anchor text: Using the terms for which you would like to be found to create links to your site. This is key to showing the search engines what your site is about, but too many links with the same anchor text is seen as being contrived. If you are doing any sort of linking campaign, make sure to diversify the anchor text.

2) Pointing to optimized pages: If you are linking to a page on your site that is not “search engine friendly”, you run the risk of causing confusion on the part of the bots that are crawling your page. The terms you are optimizing for must be present and preferably located in all the right places (title, H tags, strong tags, etc) in order for your page to be seen as being relevant for those keywords. Basically, if you are linking to a page that has not been properly optimized, you will need significantly more links in order to rank highly in the SERPS.

3)and leaving meaningful comments on others blogs (OK, I understand this part): Make sure you use do-follow links! There is a bit of HTML code that can be associated with a link called a nofollow tag or rel nofollow. There are tools that can find them for you or you can view the source and search for rel=nofollow in the link(s) in question. Hope this helps.

Gregory—Too funny! Obviously, getting links from attractive people is always ok. In fact, Google prefers it that way… =D

Don--This is often times referred to as “3-way linking” or “triangular linking”. I have not heard the term “chain linking” before, but it makes sense. There are certainly risks to this as well. Google has been aware of the reciprocal linking issue for some time now and is also aware of the evolution to 3-way linking. Both 2-way and 3-way reciprocal linking are not only considered “black hat” they are “old hat” as well…so just be careful.

Kathie--Well said!!

Leslie-- I will be glad to post an updated SEO primer or glossary. That’s a great idea, and I bet a lot of agents here could benefit from it. Thanks for commenting…now I have an idea for a new post! “Determined to trade links with someone” means that you would be actively seeking links from other websites by exchanging for a link from your website (AKA: “link swapping” or “reciprocal linking”).

I am not sure I understand what you are looking for when you say “what would it look like”, but I will try to give some different examples. There are a number of software tools that are designed to assist in creating an automated link exchange campaign. Some of which I have personally used (quite successfully I might add) when it was the thing to do.

So, to give 3 different perspectives: A) From your perspective, it would “look like” setting up a campaign, most likely with automated tools, to deliberately attempt to make your site appear to be more popular than it really is. B) To the person that you are attempting to reciprocate with, it would look like either 1) a golden opportunity, if the agent was not aware of or did not fully understand the risk/reward that is involved OR 2) like you were trying to manipulate the SERPs with old, “black hat” tactics, if the agent was “in the know”. C) To the search engines, it would look like you are trying to manipulate the SERP (search engine results page) results and they will therefore penalize you.

Don - I appreciate the vote of confidence and will try my best to deliver quality tips.