I have read and listed to much about linking and link building and some are saying reciprocal linking is dead. Others are saying linking in general is dead and then others are still touting how great Link Exchanges and Links are..... I am reading one thing over and over that the links to your site MUST be from sites in related industries. (ie if you are selling Internet Service a link from a Clothes Wepage will mean nothing) How true are these things and what is your take on the linking industry? Thanks, Eric
My experience: If you have a new site and you want to get traffic from Google, links from related sites are important. If you want traffic from MSN, links from unrelated sites seem to be just about as good as links from related sites. With MSN quantity seems to beat quality.
To get boost in ranking you should have anchor text link from related sites. selling internet service should have link from selling internet service..
I could be wrong, but I haven't seen any difference between the two. It sounds to me like the search engines tell you that it's better to get links from sites with the same subject because they are trying to keep people from joining link farms. If you are paying for the links then you will probably want them from a site in the same industry as you so that you get the most out of the link (PR and click throughs)
One way links from relevant topic webpages are extremely helpful (if donors have good pagerank PR5+).