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Why Reciprocal Linking is a So-So Idea

Written by: Bill Golden

Article Overview: Most likely, you have heard the term, reciprocal (or two-way) linking. This is basically when you say, “I’ll link to you if you link to me.” Most of the time, this is improperly done and does not result in the results you seek. Let’s learn why in this article.

Why Reciprocal Linking is a So-So Idea

Most likely, you have heard the term, reciprocal (or two-way) linking. This is basically when you say, “I’ll link to you if you link to me.” Most of the time, this is improperly done and does not result in the results you seek. Let’s learn why in this article.

In the majority of cases, the two parties involved in reciprocal linking are of the same “low ranking” stature. Both websites are maybe start-ups or are in a highly competitive industry. In some cases, the websites are in no way related and all the two website owners get is a “feel good” thing that they are each doing something nice for the other person.

To have a successful experience with reciprocal linking, you need to find someone in a complimentary industry (ideal, but not mandatory) that is valued more highly than your website. Google has something, called PageRank, that ranks web pages throughout the world. You can add this to your web browser by installing Google’s toolbar and activating PageRank. You want to reciprocate with a website that has a higher page rank than yours – it’s kind of like an average athlete being made better by playing with outstanding athletes. The higher ranking website can actually pull you up the rankings list and that is a very good thing. Of course, you have to hope they don’t spurn you because you are a lower ranked site than theirs.

You may have heard of link farms or some similar term. Link farms are websites that collect links from all over the place. You subscribe to the link farm and agree to create a page on your website that will link to a bunch of other websites and in turn, a bunch of other websites will link to yours. This was really popular a couple of years ago, but it is not considered to be a very bad idea. Search engines may blacklist your website if they discover that you are doing this. In addition, you end up with a bunch of possibly horrible and sometimes irrelevant links on your website. It does not reflect well on you at all.

I tried a link farm once. It had a nice approach in that you could select which categories of links you wanted to include, making your links more relevant. It was still horrible. Some of links were from countries I never heard of and the websites were absolutely atrocious. It’s a really bad idea.

It is better to do the work to get quality reciprocal links and, most importantly, to make sure your website is a quality site as well. If you are willing too do the work, you can turn this so-so idea into a pretty good one. Give it a try!

Related Articles
  ••••••>Use a Reciprocal Link Checker to Verify Your SEO Methods
  Link Your Way To a Higher Search Engine Ranking
  Reciprocal Links Are Still Not Dead
  Link Quality vs Link Quantity
  Understanding the Basics of Link Exchange

Article Tags: engine, Google, linking, page, pages, rank, reciprocal, reciprocal linking, search, web, website



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Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="jacksonp":8b8rg2nw][quote="terriz":8b8rg2nw] re: Cross Linking, how do you define that? I thought linking to other pages on your website (that are related) was a good thing...maybe that's not what you meant.[/quote:8b8rg2nw] So my friend,Cross Linking is simply means the process of linking between two sites,Whether or not they are owned by the same person, cross linking is the process on which the Internet is built.It allows users to reference sites with content similar to that which they are already viewing, and may be of further interest to them.[/quote:8b8rg2nw] Thanks for clarifying!
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