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Reciprocal Links Are Still Not Dead

Written by: Stoney G deGeyter

Article Overview: A while back there was quite a bit of scare mongering going around the SEO industry about how reciprocal links were dead. I had a potential client once tell me that so-and-so-big-name-in-the-SEO-industry told them that reciprocal links were dead. I've said this before and I'll say it here again. There is nothing wrong with reciprocal links. And here is the proof.

Reciprocal Links Are Still Not Dead

A while back there was quite a bit of scare mongering going around the SEO industry about how reciprocal links were dead. I had a potential client once tell me that so-and-so-big-name-in-the-SEO-industry told them that reciprocal links were dead. I've said this before and I'll say it here again. There is nothing wrong with reciprocal links. It's all about how you use/implement them that matters. No, reciprocal links are not dead and now I have the proof.
Last year I decided to run my own test so I could refute what I already knew to be true. Yeah, I know who cares about reciprocal links now, right? The fear tactics have run their course and, frankly, nobody is engaged in old-school mass reciprocal link swapping (for the love of God people, if you're still doing that, knock it off!) But for the sake of science and posterity, I now, over a year later, present the results of my (almost forgotten) reciprocal link test.

***The Set-Up***

On one of my sites I created a master testing page. From this page I linked to eight new pages created specifically for this test. Each of those pages contained a few paragraphs of content with the word "reciprocallinksarenotdead" linked to an external web site. The goal was to watch the search results to see what sites appeared in the SERPs for our test term.

For the sake of creating a good testing ground, we linked to four sites that linked back and four sites that didn't. From here we split things up even further by linking to two sites in each group to that we considered to be "high authority" for their industry, and two that we considered to be "lower authority" for their industry. We then split this again using one to link using the target site's keyword in the link and the other not. Got all that? No? OK, let me put it to you this way (the links below take you to the test pages):

*Links to reciprocal linking sites*

• Link to a low authority site using keyword


• Link to a low authority site


• Link to a high authority site using keyword


• Link to a high authority site

Link to non-reciprocal linking sites

• Link to a low authority site using keyword


• Link to a low authority site


• Link to a high authority site using keyword


• Link to a high authority site

***The Sting***

I started out checking up on this daily seeing if Google, Yahoo or MSN cached the pages linking out and then watching if/when they showed up in the SERPs. The result was quite a roller coaster ride. One day the test pages would be cached and the next day the cache date was from several days prior. This happened frequently. The same thing with the SERPs. One day all the test pages would show up and the next day gone and then the next day just some of the test pages showed up and the next others, but not necessarily the ones from the previous day. It was interesting to watch.

After about several weeks of daily monitoring I started to cut back to every few days, then weekly then, well I kind of forgot about it with the occasional thought "Hey, I wonder how that test is going", in which I'd take a quick look and forget all about it again. Here we are now, over a year later and I think I can confidently display the results as definitive.

***The Results***

Note: These were the results as of Friday, July 12, 2007, I notice that there has been some shifting in results since then, so your mileage may vary.

*Google results*

1. Low authority, non reciprocating site


2. Low authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)


3. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)


4. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)


5. Test page linking to #9 below


6. Test page linking to #2 above


7. Low authority, reciprocating site


8. High authority, reciprocating site


9. High authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)

Google supplemental results show the remainder of the testing pages. Missing from SERPs: High authority, non-reciprocating site

*Yahoo Results*

1. Low authority, reciprocating site


2. High authority, non-reciprocating site


3. High authority, reciprocating site


4. Test page linking to #8 below


5. Test page linking to #2 above


6. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)


7. Low authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)


8. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)


9. Link to a blog post that uses keyword as part of the URL

Missing from SERPs:

• Low authority, reciprocating site


• High authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)

*MSN Results*

1. High authority, reciprocating site


2. Test page linking to #10 below


3. Test page linking to #1 above


4. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)


5. Low authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)


6. Low authority, non reciprocating site


7. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)


8. High authority, non-reciprocating site


9. High authority, non-reciprocating site


10. Low authority, reciprocating site

***The Happy Ending***

We can conclude from that that, all things being equal, reciprocating links have no more or less value than one-way links. Yeah, I know, we all read Matt Cutt's post about how excessive reciprocal linking can hurt, and I'm sure Matt is right. But the key word there is "excessive". If all you do is look for low-quality reciprocal links that ad no value to any user's experience then, yes, that can, and should do you some harm. But don't be afraid of reciprocation. If someone links to you out of kindness, feel free to link back to them out of gratitude. It's not going to hurt you one bit and the link to you won't be devalued. Just be sure you're adding value, not reciprocating for the sake of reciprocating.

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  One Way Link Creating, Very Little Will Be More Advantageous For Getting Traffic

Article Tags: external web, fear tactics, god, li li, link test, love, old school, paragraphs, posterity, reciprocal link, reciprocal links, sake, scare, school mass, science, serps, target, test pages



Related Forum Posts
Re: How can I promote my site? - There are various useful techniques for promoting a website. In SEO the techniques could be "white hat" and "black hat" techniques. White hat techniques includes following techniques to promote website as per the search engine rules. - Search Engine Friendly Tags - Website submission to Search Engines - Website Submission to Social Sites (Like twitter, Facebook) - Articles Promotion & Press Release Promotion - Quality Directories promotion - Contribution to Blogs, Forums Black hat techniques can reduce website strength in the search engine and can treat site as spam that could be following. - Keywords Stuffing. - Hidden Links - Maximum Links of unknown sites.
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash
Re: Search Engine Optimization - Another good tip to remember when considering the value of a link is that all links are not handled quite the same. When we ask about things like whether a link is site specific or page specific, it's a good thing to remember that a search engine does not really see a Web site or even a a Web page. From a simple minded search engine robot's perspective, the whole Web is seen as a world made up of URLs. Reciprocal linking does not have quite the same value it did years ago. In a way, it is good to link out based on other pages that are related to a similar topic. But if you link to them and they link to you, it somewhat nullifies the value. Not always, but sometimes. The other thing to mindful of is that sometimes if you link to a Web site and are not aware that that site is participating in a link farm or doing something else against Googles Webmaster Guidelines, that you could end up being penalized for linking to that site. Google says that if a nasty site links to you, that's beyond your control, but anyone you link to is well within your control. For example, it could be something that is not readily evident to you, for example suppose you link to a Webmaster who makes a habit of buying high PR links. There have been cases where people are flagged because they are linking to shall we say "bad neighborhoods." What other types of links hold good value? Links within your own Web copy tend to have more value than links in your navigation. If a related site links to you and is also includes your keyword in their Title Tag, the link on that will have more benefit than if the Title of the page is unrelated. Initially, Google use to devalue links in some Social Media sites like keyword rich links coming to you from Facebook, but these days they seem to be carrying more value than they use to. Remember that a link within a caption underneath an image, tends to have a little more value too. In my own link building actions, I try to stay focused on links to informative pages or Blogs that I think my readers will benefit from and are at least somewhat related to the topic I'm discussing. Remember that if you Blog, that most Bloggers are very generous with links because they just seem to be so focused on their topics (or at least in cases where the Blog has a defined purpose) and many will Blog daily and many Blogger are focused on 2 way dialog and conversation trails about their topic. Other great places to get links from are authoritative and busy Web sites, places like About.com (but you need to write very useful content of an engaging, useful nature in order to get them to link to you) and of course there are educational sites that tend to deliver a lot of value in their links.
Re: Search Engine Optimization - [quote="John Alexander":tfpeanna]Another good tip to remember when considering the value of a link is that all links are not handled quite the same. When we ask about things like whether a link is site specific or page specific, it's a good thing to remember that a search engine does not really see a Web site or even a a Web page. From a simple minded search engine robot's perspective, the whole Web is seen as a world made up of URLs. Reciprocal linking does not have quite the same value it did years ago. In a way, it is good to link out based on other pages that are related to a similar topic. But if you link to them and they link to you, it somewhat nullifies the value. Not always, but sometimes. The other thing to mindful of is that sometimes if you link to a Web site and are not aware that that site is participating in a link farm or doing something else against Googles Webmaster Guidelines, that you could end up being penalized for linking to that site. Google says that if a nasty site links to you, that's beyond your control, but anyone you link to is well within your control. For example, it could be something that is not readily evident to you, for example suppose you link to a Webmaster who makes a habit of buying high PR links. There have been cases where people are flagged because they are linking to shall we say "bad neighborhoods." What other types of links hold good value? Links within your own Web copy tend to have more value than links in your navigation. If a related site links to you and is also includes your keyword in their Title Tag, the link on that will have more benefit than if the Title of the page is unrelated. Initially, Google use to devalue links in some Social Media sites like keyword rich links coming to you from Facebook, but these days they seem to be carrying more value than they use to. Remember that a link within a caption underneath an image, tends to have a little more value too. In my own link building actions, I try to stay focused on links to informative pages or Blogs that I think my readers will benefit from and are at least somewhat related to the topic I'm discussing. Remember that if you Blog, that most Bloggers are very generous with links because they just seem to be so focused on their topics (or at least in cases where the Blog has a defined purpose) and many will Blog daily and many Blogger are focused on 2 way dialog and conversation trails about their topic. Other great places to get links from are authoritative and busy Web sites, places like (but you need to write very useful content of an engaging, useful nature in order to get them to link to you) and of course there are educational sites that tend to deliver a lot of value in their links.[/quote:tfpeanna] That was all very helpful to me. Thanks
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":1jr37kqx]There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash[/quote:1jr37kqx] Hi Jeff, Thanks for adding to the list. I have one question, though. How would one implement Session IDs for a URL, and what benefit would come from doing so?


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