Having just a little knowledge, but not a great deal, in many areas of the SEO and Linking world, I need some advice. Can someone give me the latest thinking on the merits of reciprocal links vs triangular links. Many of the experts who call me daily profess that the old style reciprocal links will not only NOT help, but may harm my sites. They say the triangular linking is what the search engines, Google in particular, are looking for now. Your comments and thoughts, please
Google isn't looking for it at all. Google is only concerned about votes. They can only be direct so in Google's regard they should be one way. The SEO is after many links for anchor text and PR reasons. If you want them for anchor text, reciprocal is alright IMO. If you want many links, for PR then there are risks with reciprocal coz Google can see this (not sure if they already filter this or not). If they see someone doing it to the extremes, those links might well be filtered or even penalized. You could even argue the oppsite is true of that statement. Google ISN'T looking for 3 way because it can't see it. That's why it works so well for PR and very safe too. It works for anchor text too but is a little more hassle because of the extra party involved. So IMO it depends on the scale. You 2000 links to 'friend' and 'friend' 2000 back to you is pushing it IMO. A dozen is fine; a dozen to and from a dozen of friends is perfectly fine. Like with everything, overdo it and it could be bad.
Penalize is such a harsh word, scary word .... I don't think they would be penalize two way link exchanges, maybe filter some of the links ... or reduce the overall weight/value of the links.
I would personally consider one way links if possible. Triangular linking can get very confusing and difficult to keep up with.
Understatement I have several sites currently under-going triangular linking exchanges, and it's mind-boggling
I can't get myself to believe that Google would penalize a page because of too many reciprocal links. Let me qualify that statement by saying reciprocal links with individual web sites and links with varied anchor text. EDIT: I just did a little reading on this same subject. Here is an article on reciprocal linking.
Surely google would prefer websites to reciprocal link, and then lower the value of them if they want to continue with the page rank system. In my opinion reciprocal linking makes it easier for google to find and index pages faster. For example, page A links to page B, page B links to page C, compared with page A linking to page B and C.
I look at it as four kind of links in order of my "personal valuation" Reciprocal standard = usually from a "resource" page with no further content to a site and than the same in the other direction. I feel these will diminish in value as would a visitor actually go to such a page? It' only good for inital build and maybe pr if one needs it. Reciprocal advanced = imbedded in actual pages where the link partner can imbed in a similar way. One-way (triangular) where one links to a site and asks this site to link to another site that may link back to the original, or more inbetween. Without significant resource very hard to follow so I simply do it on trust. One-way imbedded These are links on actual pages prefably imbedded which do have actual value for a visitor. This may also be ad's (specifically if targeted). Nice if the target "repays" in kind or money. I do mostly on-way or reciprocal advanced but mainly look at it from a visitors way. Interesting & value ok lets link. Site responsive ok lets generate some real value. M
Well Yahoo does. If Yahoo feels your overagressive in exchanging links with unrelated sites, they will ban you. I know from experience. And what sucks is, only Yahoo knows what the threshold is. And I would doubt that it is applied consistently.
It seems that SEO people get bored with reciprocal link technologies and they are looking for some thing new concept and TRIANGULAR LINKS technologies give that opportunity. Only problem is that a normal site owner c'd not adopt new technologies, because it requiter good number of PR based sites, so that you can swap link between those sites.