One Way Links vs Two Way Links

[JohnW-UK]

Hi,

Was speaking to a client today and got asked how damaging two way links are. i.e. domaina.com links to domainb.com and domainb.com links back to domaina.com. I need a nice simple layman's explanation of if/how damaging they are compared to one way links. And please don't answer with you lose link juice as I have a job explaining link juice.... I am explaining things to a non techie!

Thank you!!

[irvingw]

think about it, you pass PR to me and i'll pass PR to you. At the same time we'll tell Google we are in cahoots together.:(

The easiest way to explain it is that Google is that linking to other sites on your site might make Google think that you are selling links and could get you penalized, so as an SEO you have a rule to never link out to other sites unless they are trusted domains like Facebook, Twitter or G+ pages. And in those cases you are linking to your social media profile pages for the user and not for helping other sites rank better which is against Google's TOS.

There is information directly on Google's Webmaster Guidelines that you can provide to them. Sometimes people prefer to hear it directly from the horses mouth.

[webfeatseo]

Link exchanges used to do a lot. These days not so much. You can still get a benefit from them, but you need to be careful. Don't use the same anchor text, try not to get sitewide footer links, and only do so with highly valuable partners.

I mean if you can get a DA 90 site to link back to your DA 13 site then yea a link exchange would probably benefit you a bit.

But overall 1 way links are the best way to go.

[Marcus_Miller]

I guess the simplest way to explain that is that they cancel each other out so have no benefit.

Additionally, if used in excess with keyword anchor text they may have a negative impact (through skewing the anchor text ratios).