Reciprocal Links

articles » search engine optimization

"I scratch your back and you scratch mine" is a phrase we have heard all our lives. With the advent of the World Wide Web we can now say "I link to your site and you give me a reciprocal link back to my site." Reciprocal linking offers advantages and disadvantages just like any other marketing campaign.

Reciprocal Links Advantages

More ways for people and search engines to find your site

For years people have said you need to submit to the search engines. With the advances in search engine spider technology, it is no longer a requirement to submit to the search engines. Rather it is a requirement to submit to topical directories. Reciprocal links and topical directories help you move forward and open the doors for more people and search engine spiders to find your site.

Targeted traffic

Targeted traffic basically means people that are interested in what you have or offer. It does not mean some program or club generates useless traffic to your web site wasting your hosting resources.

Let's take Apple Pie Shopping Cart as an example. To gain targeted traffic I would want links from sites that deal with web design, marketing, advertising, business, search engine optimization and a few other categories. I would never want to trade links with a site about sharks or trees ... it just does not fit.

Link popularity

Oh the battle is never won. Google has Page Rank. Yahoo has Site Match. What do we have? We have a headache. We have a headache because people think they need tons of links pointing at their site. Well, you links but what you need most is quality links. Find links in the same topic regions you focus upon.

Optimized Anchor Text

Optimized anchor text simply means the text in the link defines the topic of your site. As you may have noticed above, the words shopping cart are in the link text. This enables me to define what the site is about and gain some help in search engine placement.

Disadvantages of Reciprocal Links

Visitor Loss

Of course, you may lose some visitors who find information they want on your links pages. However, that is only a small percentage. However, as noted in the advantages section you gain targeted visitors from sites visiting you. It's a balancing act.

Reciprocal Link Scams

Some site owners will write you and offer a reciprocal link and bury your link on a non-targeted, non-optimized link page. Regrettably, this doesn't help you in the least. Non-targeted links are on pages with a mass of links just to have links. Non-optimized link pages include the mass of non-targeted links and offer no aid in pushing traffic to your site.

Other problems you'll find focus around services or web site owners stating they have reviewed your site and found your information useful to their visitors. Well, if that were really the case don't you think they would have proved they visited your site? If they do not then they are simply spamming you in hopes that you'll link to them.

Other scams include:

The non-existent or hidden link to the links page
Robots.txt file exclusion to the directory where the links pages exist
Robots Meta tag exclusion which prevents the search engine from indexing or following the links page
False Google Page Rank values
There are more

Uneducated Link Partners

Regrettably, not everyone reads my newsletters or articles. Even worse yet, not everyone reads or studies information offered by other web site owners, Internet Marketing Consultants or search engine placement consultants. As a result these uneducated link partners will continue to reach out and get links from sites that don't match them.

Poorly Optimized Anchor Text

People that write you and state they added a link to your site often have no idea how your marketing works. They take your company name or domain name and put it in the anchor text pointing to your site. Then they add a description they think will work. Regrettably, that's like me going to IBM and telling them I have added a link to their site and simply used International Business Machine Corporation as the link text. For them it won't matter much, but for Sally in Texas who sells macramé flower pot hangers Sally's Crafts won't work.

Conclusion

Once you understand the advantages and disadvantages of reciprocal links you can begin to use them to help your business grow. Learn the rules and play by them. This is one area you do not want to go outside the box. Once you step outside the box the search engines may find less value in your site and degrade your search engine placements.

articles » search engine optimization