I'm curious as to the thinking, evidence and attitudes of DP members on the task and benefit of reciprocol linking. Forget for a moment the time, effort and management issues. With G's continuous changes to the algo, their efforts to keep SEO's off balance and other considerations, is it worth the time to spend time with this activity any longer? It seems from my research there is little benefit any longer for G. It still seems to have value for Yahoo and MSN. My preliminary evidence is: 1. Recips are not showing in BL checks (for me) 2. I think G has put a filter or detector in place for recips 3. Why hassle with the trading of PR at best and bleeding PR in the case of exchanging links with lower ranked sites at worst....? Any opinions and evidence one way or another? BTW, I have two sites participating in the coop, and have seen few changes in traffic yet after 3 weeks. Hank
Rule #1: You won't see any immediate effects with anything you do when talking about G. Those new links you got from the Coop or anywhere else will take at least a month or 2 before you'll see the benefit. Also, watching G for BLs is kind of a waste of your time. They update the list infrequently and it doesn't really reflect what's really going on. Most people think Recips are still important. They may not be as good as 1-way links but they are better than nothing. So keep it up! It will add up eventually with time. Finally since you have 2 sites you could look into doing 3 way links. Most people think those are better than recips but I figure it's just a matter of time till G puts something in place to reduce the effect of 3way links too. There's my 2 cents...spend it well!
First of all, I don't know how you are checking your links with Google since they rarely show you a backlink that has PR4 or more. So if you are using the link: command in Google you are wasting your time. Second, I have NUMEROUS top 5 listings for HIGHLY competitive terms that have been attained on the strength of reciprocal links. The trick is, you have to know how to identify link partners that will have an impact on your site or you run the risk of spending a lot of time getting link exchanges that will have little effect on your SERPS. But in short, reciprocal links still work, you just have to be smart about it and ask your self what kind of links would Google like to see on my page about my subject matter. Those are the kind of links that make the biggest difference.
Exchanges with sites in your serps are far and away worth more than sites not in your serps. I wouldn't bother with those outside your serps unless there is a big pr win for you in the exchange. A site with the top 100 sites in the serps one way or 3 way linking to it will win out over a site with the top 100 sites exchanging links with it. But the second site is likely to still be top ten, if not second.
I'm not sure I am understanding you correctly, so forgive me if I'm not, but are you saying that putting links on your site to other sites is more beneficial than actually having the other sites link back to you?? Why would that be? I thought that it is worth the effort to get reciprocal links because they count as a "vote" for your site
1. Recips are not showing in BL checks (for me) they are for me 2. I think G has put a filter or detector in place for recips could be 3. Why hassle with the trading of PR at best and bleeding PR in the case of exchanging links with lower ranked sites at worst....? after a little while you will start to not care about PR