Where is the best place to put reciprocal links on our website?
-
Where should reciprocal links be placed on our website? Should we create a "Resources" page? Should the page be "hidden" from the public? I know there is a right answer out there! Thank you for your help!
Jay
-
Oops. I only just noticed the date on this question! Sorry folks...
-
Agreed. However, it might be worth adding that reciprocal links can also look natural but only if they form a small part of your link profile.
Whatever you do, Jay, dont add a page called links or resources. Make sure the links are contextual links in the content of article's or content.
My way around doing this is putting them in the testimonials pages on my sites
A good example would be when I managed to get a link from Sky.com - in return they requested a link back to their site and I would be silly not to have provided one. I didn't want the link for the juice, I wanted it for the click through's. The reason I'm saying this is to show that not all reciprocal links are seen as un-natural.
-
Good stuff....thank you for the awesome advice! I'll heed it.
-
Generally speaking, I would recommend that you do NOT copy these links from your competitor. The optimal way to use an analysis of a competitor's backlink profile is so you can copy the good links and leave the bad ones.
If you want to search your competitor's site for these links, you can try using the site: operator in Google, or perhaps the specific site's own search box.
There are forms of quality reciprocal links. They can be found on a "Resources" type of page on your site. If your site focuses on health topics you may link to the Mayo Clinic, the National Institute of Health, and other quality sites. The purpose of these links are to help your readers locate quality information. Some relevant sites may link to you as well and these links could be reciprocal which is fine.
If you have a "Resources" page where you provide links with perfect anchor text (i.e. "best real estate agent") to sites which are not relevant to yours, that is a rather obvious attempt to manipulate search engine rankings. The links you provide will offer little to no value, as well as the links you will receive. You need to give search engines a lot more credit. You are spending time and effort on what frankly amounts to bullsh*t SEO.
Investigate all your competitor's links. Look for their best links and investigate them. You want ideas, not to copy cat. The best you can do by copying your competitors is to eventually catch up to them. Provide better content, focus better keywords, be more current and relevant, be more authoritative and then you will gain links that a competitor can't copy...because the links you gain have to be earned.
-
While I generally agree with Alan above, if you're going to do recip links, I'd try to work them into the context of your site on different pages.
-
Hey Ryan. I found a bunch of links through the SEOMoz link tool analyzer that our competitors have. When I visited the link sources, all of them required a reciprocal link to be placed on our website. However, I notice that none of our competitors have a "public link page" where these reciprocals might be. Therein was my question... Jay
-
Can you share more details about these reciprocal links? What is the purpose of placing them on your site?
-
i would not get reciprocal links, Search engines look for un-natural patterns of linking, although they happan natrualy somtimes, SE's can see not only your pattern but those you have reciprocal links with.
But having said that, you are on the right track, link out on a page with low PR, include a load of links back to your own site so that you only give away a small percenatge of link juice.
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
-
Making a website menu + structure + hierarchies + kw research
When making a new website structure I assume we all think about SEO but at the same time as we can't forget UX.
Web Design | | ceranoktan
How much of your KW research would you implement in menu \ website structure?
What do you think is important to think about when making a website structure? Thank you in advance, BR,
Ceran0 -
Best Practices for Leveraging Long Tail Content & Gated Content
Our B2B site has a lot of of long form content (e.g., transcriptions from presentations and webinars). We'd like to leverage the long tail SEO traffic driven to these pages and convert those visitors to leads. Essentially, we'd like Google to index all this lengthy, keyword-rich content AND we'd like to put up a read gate that requires users to register before viewing the full article. This is a B2B site, and the goal is to generate leads. Some considerations and questions: How much of the content to share before requiring registration? Ask too soon and it's a terrible user experience, give too much away and our business objectives are not met. Design-wise, what are good ways to do this? I notice Moz uses a "teaser" to block Mozinar content, and I've seen modals and blur bars on other sites. Any gotchas that Google doesn't like that we should be aware of? Trying to avoid anything that might seem like cloaking. Is it better to split the content across several pages (split a 10K word doc across 10 URLs and include a read gate on each) or keep to one page? Thank you!
Web Design | | Allie_Williams0 -
Does a Website Overlay Hurt Ranking?
We are looking into personalizing visits on our website. Rather than to write Tb of code on each page, we want to use a little line of Java script on the page, that would allow to place overlay on the site, depending on the visitor. Example: Change the home page picture when a returning visitor comes back on the website and show him/her a different picture bases upon the pages he/she visited prior. Would that overlay be caught by Google and would G have a problem with that? We all know about cloaking, but G does not penalize for heat mapping overlays, for example. Or not to my knowledge they don't. Thanks all for your personal insights! Peter
Web Design | | Discountvc0 -
Nav / Sitemap Question. Using a "services" page vs just linking directly to individual service page?
Okay, so our company offers video production, web design, and web marketing services. While we do offer these services individually, our goal is to get our clients to integrate these services together. Our nav is currently like so : home - about - video - web design - web marketing - blog - contact Now I've seen businesses and agencies also use a nav with a "services" button instead of listing out their service offerings (if they have more than 1, like us). The services button usually links to a category page or has a drop down with links to the company's individual services. I'm wondering if there is any benefit to having a main services page like this and linking to the individual pages off of it (video ,web design, marketing, etc). Or if we should just keep it the way we have it now (since we've already got some page authority on the individual service pages). I know this may not be the most important aspect of our site and we may be over-thinking it but any thoughts/ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Web Design | | RenderPerfect0 -
Wordpress or custom built website?
Hello fellow mozzers, Hope you are all well. I am looking to get a website done and I am struggling to decide whether to get a custom build website site done or a website built on the WordPress platform. Would you be able to share your experiences and advice/suggestions on what you would use, and why? (pros and cons, etc.) Thanks in advance. Kind Regards
Web Design | | JonathanRolande0 -
What are the top 3 things you evaluate when contracted to SEO a website?
As a freelancer, what are the top 3 things you evaluate when contracted to SEO a website for a client?
Web Design | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Effects of HTML layout on Arabic websites and SEO
Hi all, I was hoping someone may be able to help. We are putting together an Arabic website and due to reading right to left as opposed to left to right, the site HTML layout is mirrored compared to normal with everything flipped over. What we are wondering is, will this effect SEO and what are the SEO implications of this? Do the search engine bots automaticlaly know to read the content etc differently and understand that everything is purposely mirrored / the HTML is in a different location compared to a site in the UK / US etc? Any help on this would be most appreciated. Cheers!
Web Design | | marcelo-2753980 -
Map Search Tools to integrate on Accommodation Website
Hello all, Can any recommend a Map Search tool that i can integrate into my accommodation website. Ideally I want to be able to pin my clients on the map search with links back to their listing page on my website and provide an alternative search facility for clients looking for accommodation. Am covering the South Africa region specifically. Am assuming that i could go down the Google Maps route but would really like to know what alternatives there are on offer. Also what SEO considerations do i need to think about when adding this to my website. Thanks in advance for any help.
Web Design | | SamanthaRiggien0