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
-
Xyz links
I have a lot of backlinks ending with .xyz, around 20%, and they look very suspicious. Should I disavow these? Here are a few: yourrelicsbargains.xyz fantasticsiteinfo.xyz yourvintagelifestyle.xyz usefuldiscount4u.xyz bestdealsaction.xyz bestmemorabilialifestyle.xyz 59177.net lovecollectorsbargains.xyz
Link Building | | moon-boots0 -
Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?
I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it. I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site). In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance! 2KmX0
Link Building | | leggo0 -
Using sitewide links to improve link profile?
Hi Guys... When I look at my competitor's link profile, they often have thousands of backlinks. For example, one of our main competitor, he got 3,400 backlinks in total but only 80 referring domains. When I look at my link profile, I have around 50-60 referring domains, but hardly 80 backlinks. My question is, is it okay to get a few sitewide links (no-follow of course!) to get to the thousands backlinks? Or I will be able to achieve top rankings with my current link profile? Thanks!!
Link Building | | TheSEOGuy10 -
Reciprocal Link Dangers?
I know that there are issues with reciprocal linking, and I'd choose to avoid it if I could, but the circumstance I have been put into may require me to do so. Say we do it in the worst possible way. What is the worst case scenario here? Is it possible to be hit with a site-wide penalty? Is there a range of penalties? or you just get dinged or not? Will the links themselves simply be devalued? and by how much? they loose half their juice? All of it? And if you are penalized, how difficult would it be to recover? Can you just ditch the recips? or is it a lot more difficult than that? Obviously it has to do more with how you do it and what your site and the other site are like content-wise, but I just wanted to know what you think about the actual possible penalties and recovery. TIA for any answers.
Link Building | | DownPour0 -
Link in the footer
we have a sponsored link in the footer of a website, and since that footer is displayed on each page of that site, it shows that we have thousands of links coming from that site. my question is : does Google consider this as spamming? and does it help us , harm us, or has no effect?
Link Building | | puremobile0 -
My site has more than 1,341,796 total links but only 500 external links after months of SEO. Please help me ,not sure what went wrong.
My site has more than 1,341,796 total links but only 500 external links after months of SEO. Please help me ,not sure what went wrong.
Link Building | | rsethia1230 -
Linking Root Domains V.s Total Links
When analysing a company's inbound links, what is more important to note: The number of linking root domains, or the total number of links? And why?
Link Building | | SEOrookie170 -
Link value of :"
Very recently linkedin changed the way they link. The links in the profile are no longer "nofollow" the new links are like this: <a href="[/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Estramark%2Enl%2F&urlhash=dWm-](view-source:http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Estramark%2Enl%2F&urlhash=dWm-)" target="_blank" title="New window will open" name="overviewsite"> (http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http://www.stramark.nl/&urlhash=dWm-) Question: What impact does this redirect have for the linkvalue of a link from linkedin. ( it is better than nofollow but what is the impact of this redirect? what actually happens and is the value? URL for the profile i mentioned it on. http://www.linkedin.com/in/blomwouter
Link Building | | Stramark1