Are reciprocal links of any value today?
-
Does anyone still use the reciprocal link exchange technique and is it of any value?
-
This is a dead link building strategy and can be dangerous nowadays (especially if not in the same niche) and can get both sites penalized, you should at very least nofollow one of the sites doing the linking.
Not recommended for boosting serps, might be viable for cross traffic if each site sells something the other does not for example.
-
The first thing I would say to this is since penguin link profiles are under more scrutiny than ever and as such you really want to have a natural link profile. Realistically is it natural to have only inbound links? - no a natural link profile will have links flowing in both directions and as such some will be reciprocal. However you need to make sure that if you are doing a reciprocal link with a website then you linking back would add value to your visitors. If you are going to reciprocal link I would work to this principle and keep them to a minimal and then you should be ok. I do personally have two sites that I work on that are linking to each other and this hasn't caused any negative impact on my rankings as they both rank well, but the link makes sense and I haven't created sites just to link to each other.
If you are thinking of going down the route of offering links to other sites if they link to you purley to boost the flow of link juice and increase links to your site then I would stay away from this practice, as there are penguins swimming in those waters!!
-
Reciprocal link exchange is mainly effective in two aspects, in link building and in traffic building. It is good if you get relevant and dofollow links. I think now very few people are using reciprocal link exchange.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Link over-building?
Hello all. One of the first things we do for our clients is to claim their local listings, include them on a set of selected directories (8-10), and blog directories (5), if applicable. Since they will all be linked to the client site, could doing all of this at once run us into problems with unnatural link growth? Thanks! Frank
Link Building | | FrankSweeney0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950 -
Buy links
I know that many of you are against the whole thing with buying links. Your feelings put aside. Will it be better for my site to buy links or even do link exchange? Haven´t the crawlers been thought by now how to find these untrue links? I have read somewhere that the stop after 100 links, aren´t they smarter than that?
Link Building | | mato0 -
Outbound links
Hi there, i know inbound links are what hold the main value in terms of link building but if i have an inbound link from a big company such as ITV or BBC and they have put an article on their site linking back to mine, would it be beneficial if i made a comment on my site and then link back to their article or will this not really help? Sorry as you can tell im very new to seo! thanks anthony
Link Building | | anthonybriant0 -
Any value in link building to local pages on my site?
If I'm trying to rank for the term 'wedding band' with my url: http://www.musicliveuk.com/home/wedding-bands will linking to local pages such as: http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-acts/hire-wedding-bands/wedding-bands-london help the main page to rank? I added the 'local' pages to try and pick up any traffic from long tail search queries but my main focus is on getting the main page to rank as the traffic from long tail queries is so small. So is it worth me spending time building links to these local pages in order to try and help the main page rank?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
LINK BUILDING - Does it really matter if the link is not relevant?
Hi guys, I have just done a lot of link buillding and I thought I am just going to link build and I am not going to go after RELVANT links. I have property/real esate website and I have been any kind of link builidng and I have noteced some good increases in rankings.. So my questions is; Does it really matter if the link is relvant to property or real estate if I have got ranking increases? Or will it later harm my site?? Thanks Gareth
Link Building | | GAZ091 -
Link building for rankings VS Link building for relationships
A Big Shout To Everyone -- Good Morning and What's Up 🙂 As I read today through seomoz professional guide to link building and the section why link building matters and in addition to this a newsletter I received today that changed my whole thinking towards link building for rankings vs for relationships. It is already happening on social networks if you are active there, but what about on your website. What are your thoughts on the following ? Google's job is provide the most relevant results to surfers online, and looking the link profile of a site & the page itself is the key to determining which page to serve on plate to the surfers link query ! Webmasters Site Objective:
Link Building | | helpwanted
I think that we as webmasters have to ask ourselves what do we want to achieve with link building. To get quick traffic or build slow authority links, high rankings, lead generation, sales & other things here I may be missing etcccc Other Objective Networking & Relationship Building Alliances : What I discovered today is that building links for 1st page rankings are great and will provide me with steady traffic, but not all of it is targeted traffic, but what else can I do to bring targeted traffic and at the same time try to build alliances with other related non competing business owners online. The idea... is to apply old school networking / relationship building alliances to get targeted traffic to my site that can actually benefit from my services. How Do We Achieve This I become a editor for approving resource links for me site, only the best will be placed on my site as a resource. Build a valuable tightly themed categorized resource section with related non competing resources that can help my sites visitors find what they are looking for, send visitors to non competing resources that may purchase their services which helps me build a relationship with them, and may can with rankings as well, provided I am selective with my qualification process. Questions & Concerns Below : What should I be thinking about when creating a resource categorized links page How many outgoing do follow links should I allow from this links partner page How will this links resource page affect my own SE 1st Page Rankings and is it worth it based on getting targeted traffic Any pros / cons I may be missing here0 -
If I write a PR release on a site such as PRweb with anchor-text links that is picked up and published by other news sites, do the engines consider this duplicate content or additional, beneficial links?
I recently wrote a news release on PRweb that was picked up identically by 8 other news websites, with the same anchor-text links as the original. Is the reproduction of duplicate content and links across different websites like this to the benefit or detriment of SEO and ranking power? Some of the links are: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/view/pressrelease/eventa-new-eventa-christmas-parties-website-is-launched-648923?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Alert&utm_content=pressrelease http://www.prweb.com/releases/christmasparties/neweventasite/prweb8562064.htm Many thanks!!
Link Building | | RobertHill0