Search Engines & Strategies Frank Ross on 17 Nov 2006 07:20 am
Reciprocal Links Strategies 2007
Back in the day, well not too long ago, link exchanges were all the rage. You link to me, I’ll link to you. The online version of reciprocal back-scratching, each link was supposed to benefit the linkee with an inbound link.
It was such a rage that software packages were built around the concept. Software like SEO Elite that would manage this network of reciprocal links for you. (SEO Elite has value beyond that, thankfully).
But with each successive Google update, these link arrangements became more and more suspect. I can remember as early as February of 2005 hearing warning sounds coming from SEO professionals about these kinds of arrangements. There was even some anecdotal evidence that these link swap arrangements can penalize your rankings.
Yet, it amazes me that I continue to get ‘link exchange’ requests on my eCommerce sites. I have long since discontinued the ‘links’ email address and now I get the requests in the customer service and info mailboxes. The senders explain to me how much the link exchange will benefit my site.
Mounting evidence tells me that these are no longer a good idea, except perhaps in the case where the two sites are relevant. Of course ‘relevant’ is awfully subjective, so even that needs to be carefully studied. I have a form email for these requestors now that politely says we no longer engage in link exchange arrangements.
Does anyone actually think these are a good idea anymore?
Tags: Reciprocal Links, Link Exchange, Link Swapping,
on 24 Jan 2007 at 6:46 pm 1.Josh said …
If you ever want to exchange links, just let me know.
Seriously though, this is good to know. Where I’ve worked, we’ve had consultants from well-respected huge SEO firms to small businesses that claim they are the masters. Each has a different angle and an opinion on various SEO efforts and their importance in rankings. Lately, I’ve just started tuning them out. There is however, some software out there that compares your site to a bunch of others, and then says how you compare with them to incoming links, keywords, pagerank, etc etc and offers ideas for solutions. I’m going to do some research and probably blog about it, but for now, I’m guessing that sort of method (comparisson with who is getting the best rank) is what I’ll be trusting from now on.
Anyway, thanks for the blog and the good idea. I’ll actually link over here in my article.