Just wondered what everyone's thoughts on reciprocal link exchanges. Have you stopped exchanging links but instead written content that people will link to?
Jeffrey, okay so I design an article, everyone loves it and copies this article on to a page with a link back to the original site, ie. mine. Google is going to see this has duplicate content, without a doubt. How can you get around this - is it me or is Google really putting obsticles in our paths, and here's me thinking Google want to work with webmasters! lol
Good Point. You could always create a "Snippet" that could be posted on other sites with a link back to the "Full" version.
I've stopped doing link exchanges just targeting PR or backlinks. I now do them only if the other site can send me a good amount of new visitors.
So what do you do mopacfan to get links. Surely links = good serps? If you no longer do link exchanges, did you remove your link page?
I'd like to know what real evidence any of you have that reciprocal links either don't work or are detrimental to your web site. I still reciproal link and I think they are still working. Now as to duplicate content. Articles get published multiple times by completely legitmate sources. I have always thought that Google scanned the entire page, code and all, and that as long as the article is on a unique page then it would not be considered duplication? I'm not at all sure about this, but that is what I have thought.
I to believe that recip links are dead. I will state I have no proof of this but I feel that google is discounting these types of links. This brings up another interesting point. If they are dead what is going to happen to all those sites that have sitewide links within the real estate industry? If we start to see a lot of these type sites fall from the first page of the search results in google we know that this is a factor to be considered. I myself have not been doing recip linking since Oct of last year. We presently are testing a few sites to see which is the best linking stratagy to take with our new real estate sites. It is slower to aquire one ways but in the long run it may be worth it.
I have completely stopped link exchange but still contact webmasters who have good sites related in content. Creating text and placing it on the right page with a couple links to your site embedded works. Not the old links on pages with links.
Mike, couldn't that be treat as a doorway page? ;-) Compar, I'm with you on the links, I'm sure reciprocal link exchanges do carry some weight, but I think it is a nominal amount. Google used to be easy to optimise for, in that you'd concentrate on links, and on page optimisation - it appears that they have put many obsticles in the way to make it harder for webmasters to optimise their site Would you agree? With regard to duplicate content - I thought it looked at the actual content, so if you had a two page article, and the content was exactly the same, then it would be classed as duplicate content. I have no evidence to base this on.
i have drastically increased my google rankings thru reciprical links so I would say you are totally wrong
We have quite a few websites and have people that we pay to write new content for us each day that we use on these websites. Here is the question... Since the content that we use we use across multiple sites (and on multiple pages within each site formatted differently depending on how we are displaying it) AND we cross link between the sites, from what I am reading above... this could actually hurt our rankings? I am seeing a huge influx of spidering of the sites and this content, but it has not clear yet whether traffic is up because of that or from other marketing we are doing. Any thoughts?
I think that as long as you keep linking with related websites (even when they link back to you) is and will still be given some weight. I see nothing wrong in having a site presenting other useful (related) resources to its visitors. The cooperation (including reciprocal exchanges) between two related websites should not be discouraged. Thay can be (and probably are) given less weight but they should not be frowned upon. I oughta mail that to Google
What I meant was for example a page with information about flash design and having a link within the text leading to a flash designers page. That can make a huge impact, more so than a big banner on top or bottom. That would be advertising, embedded in the text it would be a recommendation from a web site that has good information about the subject.
Mike, I've wanted to do something like that for the advertisers on my site, because I agree that it looks much better than a banner advertisement. I've always worried, that some numpty will come along though and report it as spam, i.e doorway page, so I've always stopped myself from going down that route. I agree - but something happened around the 17 December, and Im wondering if it's changes to the algo related to links, or it's a sandbox related to an increase in backlinks with the same anchor text.
Yes... very good response. I will keep doing it since we really just want visitors to know about the other sites that we have as well.
Believe me I have a lot of real estate clients and all of the ppl I networked with were a part of a program that fueled weight from top to bottom. That program crumbled and so did the rankings. I have created my real estate forum now to start my own community. I don't see anything wrong with embedding links to good resources within an article. A doorway would be some garbage text you paid someone 5 bucks to write, and a big fat banner on top to the real site. That would be spam. But as long as they site that you add within the text has real content related to your writing, both robots and human editors will be fine with it.
I don't think it's dead....compare with 2 sites, every thing on the site are the same but only one site add a reciprocal link program. whos gona win in the search engine.