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We're in the process of The Great _Inquisition_piecing together a reconsideration request. In doing so, we reached out to an agency to filter and flag our backlinks as safe, should be no-followed, or should be removed. The problem is, they flagged several of our earned, industry partner links (like those pointing to us, HireAHelper, from 1-800-Pack-Rat and PODS for example) as either should be no-followed or should be removed. I have a hard time believing Google would penalize such a natural source of earned links, but then again, this is our second attempt at a Reconsideration Request, and I want to cover all my bases. What say you Moz community? No-follow? Remove? Leave alone?

From what I get out of Rand's comment above, there's no existing penalty in Google's algorithm for reciprocal linking. So it's a great idea, and yes jumping on board with the single goal of beating your competitors will get you fast results.

But those results might be short term if the reciprocal links you're involved with don't make sense logically. What happens if in a month the webspam team rolls out another Panda  focused on devaluing any reciprocal links that don't appear natural?

Would you rather watch your competitors get washed off the first page, while you climb? Or join them in the rankings loss (and more importantly, traffic loss)?

Exactly! Industry reciprocals are bound to happen. Why wouldn't you and your partners point links at each other?

It becomes a penalizable (new word?) problem when you over-do it or work it as a "strategy." Which worries me for you, Samuel, as you word the final question:

"Should I be adopting reciprocal links and banner exchanges. I know these strategies worked years ago but surely not in 2012?"

My answer would be, "No." You shouldn't be adopting a reciprocal link & banner exchange strategy. You should build a product or service that earns links and banners. And on your own site, you should feature businesses and websites that you respect and/or work with in your own banners and links. Point customers towards resources you're proud to recommend.

Rand's answer to this question surprised me when I read it in the Monthly Moz-Letter from July. Short version: reciprocal links not working is a widely spread myth that even I believed** until reading this:**

Rand(om) Question**** Want to ask Rand your inbound marketing question? Send it toErica, our newsletter wrangler, and you might see your answer here next month.

Walter Hicks asks, "If a website has a backlink to mine, is it bad to link back to their site? Does Google see that as a reciprocal link and basically nullify them?"

Hi Walter,

This is such a common misconception that we put it on our list of top SEO myths (at #6 in this WB Friday video). Linking to a site that links to you has no negative impacts, and you shouldn't worry about doing so. The only caveat is the intent; Google's webspam team cares a lot about how you acquire links and why sites/pages link to each other. If the only reason you're getting a link is because you've agreed to link to someone, you're in danger and Google is working to stop those links from having an impact. If there's a legitimate reason for both to exist, you're on safe ground.

Wish you luck!
Rand

Thanks Ryan, but I'd rather not. It's some research on an old link deal we had that we're rolling back. I'm not exactly proud of it

But I can tell you I started by running OSE on Domain A. Then filtered for "External Only" and "All Links to this Root Domain" and "Group links by Domain". Then scrolled down to find the domain I was looking for backlinks from, clicked the plus sign next to their name, which revealed 3 of the top links back and a link to "view all the links from this domain". Clicking on that takes you to the report I want to export.

Hey thanks Megan! I just sent an email over with the link.

Hey Ryan - It was a domain to domain report that listed all the pages that link to one specific "domain A" from another specific "domain B".

In OSE it lists out all 93 links just fine, but then the exported file only shows 25 links.

In OpenSiteExplorer, I clicked "Download CSV" for a report on backlinks from one domain to another. The online visualization in OSE showed 93 external inbound links from site A to site B.

When I opened the report, there are only 25 linking pages listed. How do I download the full list?

Hey Ken, if I remember correctly, it took a few weeks to get updates flowing weekly in my crawl reports. The first major crawl of a site takes a while to cover all the bases. I think that's why they give you that initial quick crawl. But after those few weeks of their crawler getting used to the site I saw updates weekly tracking changes I'd been making. The SEOmoz toolset is well worth the monthly fee based on my experience.

If you're an authority in your industry and share new data or strategies as a guest on another industry-related, high-quality, well-trafficked blog, the link in your author byline at the end will always count for a lot. You've earned a vote because you're an authority in your industry. The visits and social signals of people commenting on that post, sharing it etc., will indicate that to Google.

On the other side, if, like Geoff Jackson said, you're throwing together 500 words of rubbish to get posted on a spammy, low-readership blog, just for some exact match anchor text that you've used in links 100 times before, Google will discount that link's value, and might even penalize your site.

I guess my point is - excellent guest blog posting is still very white-hat, and always will be. As industry authority figures share their knowledge around the web on high authority blogs, the links back to their own content are great votes that they've earned.

I interpret what you're saying in your question to mean all guest blogging is bad and Google will eventually throw it all out. However, just as with anchor text, if it's done well then it still counts for something. Guest posting is still a great idea if you're a great guest posting helpful content.

Even though the intention might be better, the Google Algorithm doesn't take into account intention. If it sees two pages linking to each other, it will flag it as reciprocal and reduce at least some of the value of each link, if not all. I'd recommend asking for a straight one-way link. Maybe offer your vendors a badge to put on their site as a sign of pride in your working relationship. The badge could then link to you, and both of you benefit without a link exchange...

Thanks for the feedback Ryan. It's true things could've changed. I was just curious if anyone had done any tests one way or the other. I think I'll go with continuing to build up our Facebook brand page community, although building likes on the URL is tempting and seems like something Google will count in the future if they don't now... Anyone else have any input or experience with rankings improving because of likes on a URL or FB brand page?

True, and I see the benefit of that. As a personal user I interact more with the brands I follow on Facebook.

But as far as SEO value goes, is there any advantage to more likes on our URL vs our page?

What I'm scared of is that the info I've been reading is starting to say there's not a way to get direct ranking SEO value out of social interaction with Facebook...

(Note: main question in bold)

I know this post basically establishes that Facebook shares are not a strong cause of increased rankings.

But what about likes? I've searched and read through the forum and YouMoz blog but haven't really found this question answered.

We just redesigned our site and we're implementing sharing options in the booking and order completion processes - should we point the Facebook Like button to like our URL or our Facebook brand page (currently with 3,800+ likes)?

Seems that a like of the URL would be more direct ranking value (what we're going for), but according to that same post mentioned above, Google doesn't crawl or index FB wall pages... so is all Facebook activity - shares, url likes, brand page likes - for naught? (at least for now, till Google starts using that info)

I would guess SEOmoz's indexing depends on the popularity of the site, much like Google's caching is more regular on more important sites. What's the mozRank of the site? As a wild guess I'd say check again in a week.

FIrst queston - "this is a list of pages that presumably link to the URL I entered" - yes those are pages linking to your URL.

Second, if you visit one of the listed linking URL's and can't find the link, that just means the link may have been taken down. There is some delay between live data and what OpenSIteExplorer shows. The other reason might be that the page links to a URL that redirects to the URL you're researching.

Hope this helps!