Why Does Massive Reciprocal Linking Still Work?
-
It seems pretty well-settled that massive reciprocal linking is not a very effective strategy, and in fact, may even lead to a penatly. However, I still see massive reciprocal linking (blog roll linking even massive resource page linking) still working all the time.
I'm not looking to cast aspersion on any individual or company, but I work with legal websites and I see these strategies working almost universally.
My question is why is this still working? Is it because most of the reciprocally linking sites are all legally relevant? Has Google just not "gotten around" to the legal sector (doubtful considering the money and volume of online legal segment)?
I have posed this question at SEOmoz in the past and it was opined that massively linking blogs through blog rolls probably wouldn't send any flags to Google. So why is that it seems that everywhere I look, this strategy is basically dismissed as a complete waste of time if not harmful?
How can there be such a discrepency between what leading SEOs agree to be "bad" and the simple fact that these strategies are working en masse over the period of at least 3 years?
-
The SEO industry in general likes to "move along" whenever they catch wind that Google has cracked down on something. This is a mistake, though. Google may use X algorithm to find sites that are employing Y strategy. IE, for reciprocal links Google targeted large sprawling partner pages, not just whether or not two domains linked to one another. You could still succeed with merely a different method of placing the reciprocal links...
That being said, I would never tell you that blog roll links don't work, I would merely tell you to use those strategies on sites that are less important in the long roll.
But, of course, I would probably tell you to use just about any and every strategy, as long as you divide those strategies across sites so as to minimize risk.
-
Thanks for the response. I'm very confident that these strategies are working. Already experimenting with secondary sites.
I'm less frustrated by the effectiveness of these strategies, and more curious as to why the SEO community generally disregards them as ineffective.
While I appreciate that "white hat seos" don't advocate "gray / black hat" techniques, it seems that they must at least acknowledge that they are still largely working.
-
Good questions...
1. First, it is difficult to prove that the techniques you notice competitors using are actually responsible for their rankings. I know it is frustrating to stomach, but the easy-to-detect stuff is generally ignored by Google. Chances are, your competitors are getting something right other than simply relying on the one strategy you easily see.
2. The general response to reciprocal link strategies was to devalue gigantic link directories created on individual sites. You know, these sprawling "partner" sections. This update probably has little to no impact on other reciprocal strategies such as blog-roll exchange.
I guess my bigger question is this - if you are certain these strategies are working, but are afraid they may end up with penalties, why not create a secondary site and start using them? It costs $9.95 a year for another domain. Wordpress is free. You can get hosting for it at $5/mo. It is time to start a multi-site strategy and play some hardball. Divide. And. Conquer.
Keynes said it best, in the long run we are all dead. With multi-site strategy, you can keep your long-run horse in the race, but run every dirty tactic you like on churn-and-burn sites you don't care about.
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
-
Sitewide nav linking from subdomain to main domain
I'm working on a site that was heavily impacted by the September core update. You can see in the attached image the overall downturn in organic in 2019 with a larger hit in September bringing Google Organic traffic down around 50%. There are many concerning incoming links from 50-100 obviously spammy porn-related websites to just plain old unnatural links. There was no effort to purchase any links so it's unclear how these are created. There are also 1,000s of incoming external links (most without no-follow and similar/same anchor text) from yellowpages.com. I'm trying to get this fixed with them and have added it to the disavow in the meantime. I'm focusing on internal links as well with a more specific question: If I have a sitewide header on a blog located at blog.domain.com that has links to various sections on domain.com without no-follow tags, is this a possible source of the traffic drops and algorithm impact? The header with these links is on every page of the blog on the previously mentioned subdomain. **More generally, any advice as to how to turn this around? ** The website is in the travel vertical. 90BJKyc
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ShawnW0 -
New Flurry of thousands of bad links from 3 Spammy websites. Disavow?
I also discovered that a website www.prlog.ru put 32 links to my website. It is a russian site. It has a 32% spam score. Is that high? I think I need to disavow. Another spammy website link has spam score of 16% with with several thousand links. I added one link to the site medexplorer.com 6 years ago and it was fine. Now it has thousands of links. Should I disavow all three?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
Is it Okay to Nofollow all External Links
So, we all "nofollow" most of the external links or all external links to hold back the page rank. Is it correct? As per Google, only non-trusty and paid links must be nofollow. Is it all same about external links and nofollow now?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
JavaScript encoded links on an AngularJS framework...bad idea for Google?
Hi Guys, I have a site where we're currently deploying code in AngularJS. As part of this, on the page we sometimes have links to 3rd party websites. We do not want to have followed links on the site to the 3rd party sites as we may be perceived as a link farm since we have more than 1 million pages and a lot of these have external 3rd party links. My question is, if we've got javascript to fire off the link to the 3rd party, is that enough to prevent Google from seeing that link? We do not have a NOFOLLOW on that currently. The link anchor text simply says "Visit website" and the link is fired using JavaScript. Here's a snapshot of the code we're using: Visit website Does anyone have any experience with anything like this on their own site or customer site that we can learn from just to ensure that we avoid any chances of being flagged for being a link farm? Thank you 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AU-SEO0 -
Are businesses still hiring SEO that use strategies that could lead to a Google penalty?
Is anyone worried that businesses know so little about SEO that they are continuing to hire SEO consultants that use strategies that could land the website with a Google penalty? I ask because we did some research with businesses and found the results worrying: blog farms, over optimised anchor text. We will be releasing the data later this week, but wondered if it something for the SEO community to worry about and what can be done about it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | williamgoodseoagency.com0 -
Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects
Hi, I have been asked to look at a site where I suspect some questionable SEO work, particularly link building. The site does seem to be performing very poorly in Google since January 2014, although there are no messages in WMT. Using WMT, OPenSiteExplorer, Majestic & NetPeak, I have analysed inbound links and found a group of links which although are listed in WMT, etc appear to 302 redirect to a directory in China (therefore the actual linking domain is not visible). It looks like a crude type of link farm, but I cant understand why they would use 302s not 301s. The domains are not visible due to redirects. Should I request a disavow or ignore? The linking domains are listed below: http://www.basalts.cn/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | crescentdigital
http://www.chinamarbles.com.cn/
http://www.china-slate.com.cn/
http://www.granitecountertop.com.cn/
http://www.granite-exporter.com/
http://www.sandstones.biz/
http://www.stone-2.com/
http://www.stonebuild.cn/
http://www.stonecompany.com.cn/
http://www.stonecontact.cn/
http://www.stonecrate.com/
http://www.stonedesk.com/
http://www.stonedvd.com/
http://www.stonepark.cn/
http://www.stonetool.com.cn/
http://www.stonewebsite.com/ Thanks Steve0 -
What is your opinion on link farm risks and how do I explain this to a client?
Hi All, I have a new monthly retainer client who still has a $600/month "linkbuilding" contract with a large national advertising/directory organization (I won't name them but I'm sure you can guess). I just got a "linking" report and it's filled with garbage: Comment spam (on huffington post). Fake G+ Account Links from multiple sites with Domain Authority of 1 (http://encirclehealth.net/, http://livingstreamhealth.co/ , etc). These have no "about" sections, no ads, no products - just blatant link farms. I've told the client that these links pose a danger in Google, that he should get them to remove them, and that he should request a refund. Their rep is pushing back hard and saying there's absolutely nothing to worry about. Am I overestimating how bad/dangerous these are? How would you explain to the client the risks? I've already shared a report and my recommendations with the client but am really just looking for some affirmation of my position that these MUST get removed. Any advice much appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PlusROI0 -
Spammy Links (from .ru) pointing to my domain! How to deal with it?
Hi all, We run an e-commerce store - I am just looking at the apache logs and I am finding a lot of spammy links that have been referrers to our pages - when I check the links, I cannot find our URL in an HREF on their page so I presume they may be using some country based cloaking? These are the domains that are targeting specific pages on our site:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs2010
http://3xru.ru/
http://saldoconsult.ru/
http://euro-casino.ru/casino/
http://delaymoney.maroderi.ru/
http://intimhot.ru/ How to deal with this? Our site is about cookware and they seem to be pointing these links to very specific products and categories. Never seen anything like this before, help would be appreciated. Thanks, B0