What are Reciprocal Links? Are they really less valuable than inbound links? The term Reciprocal Links refers to when your website links to another, and that website links back to your site. Reciprocal links are a very common form of linking, especially among sites with similar content and subject matter. Reciprocal links differ from inbound links, which are links that point in only one direction, from one site to yours. Building links in general is a huge part of SEO tactics. Google's Page Rank system is determined mainly by the amount of links direct users on the internet to your site. The more links you our page, the higher your Page Rank, and Page Rank is a huge factor in determining your overall placement in the results pages for search engines. The same goes for the other major search engines. But if you look into the issue, you'll find that many search engine optimization specialists seem to think that reciprocal links are inferior to inbound links. To some degree, this may be true, but before you pass judgment on reciprocal links, let's look at this issue a bit more deeply. Research does seem to show that inbound links carry more weight in Google than reciprocal links when it comes to search engine optimization. An inbound link suggests the relevance of a site, while a reciprocal link connotes more of a deal being struck between two sites to share traffic. However, this does not mean reciprocal links have no value. Value often depends on the type of reciprocal links. For example, if a website focusing on classic cars links to an interesting article on this subject at another site, and then sometime in the future that site does the same, that does not mean that reciprocal links suddenly don't matter. Reciprocal links of this kind happen all the time, because it is simply how the internet works. In reality, those kinds of reciprocal links will probably do a great deal to aid your Page Rank. The kinds of reciprocal links that carry less value are the ones that simply link home pages to home pages. These are bland reciprocal links of little specificity and thus little value. Similarly, reciprocal links garnered through a reciprocal links program are of very little value. Search engine crawlers will quickly pick up on the fact that these kinds of SEO tools are only serve the purpose of being a cheap and manipulative search engine marketing strategy, and they probably devalue those types of reciprocal links. Keep in mind, it's not so much the type of link that matters, it's the quality of the link. Reciprocal links can be of very high value in SEO marketing, as long as they come from good sources. Enjoy........
I would have to disagree unfortunately with a few of your points... Some are just 'technically' not right... others are just wrong. Here's where I disagree: Reciprocal links ARE inbound links... They are just a particular kind of inbound link. There are LOTS of categories of inbound links - followed and nofollowed inbound links, one-way inbound links, reciprocal inbound links, inbound links from 3,4,5 way link exchanges, etc. While 'generally' speaking this may be somewhat correct if you assume all inbound links are created equal (but that is NEVER the case), but I wouldn't explain it this way. Your page's PR is based on both the quantity of inbound links AND the quality (i.e. how strong the link is, how much "juice" is passed). I could have a page with 1 inbound link that has a higher PR than another page with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of inbound links. How much PR is passed in on a single inbound link depends on several factors - is it followed (passes PR) or nofollowed (no PR passed)? How much PR does the referring URL have? How many outbound links exist on the referring URL? It is not just the sheer number of inbound links. This is just flat out wrong. PR has VERY little to do with how you rank in the SERPs. I see PR0 pages that outrank PR5,6,7,8 pages all day every day in the SERPs. PR is only one of 200+ factors that Google's ranking algorithm considers everytime they rank a URL for a particular keyword phrase. It has VERY little effect... The main thing having a high PR page is good for is if you're selling links on your site. People on the web think, like you, that PR is this huge ranking factor at Google. So sites w/ PR4+ pages can sell links at a VERY much inflated price. I see people buying links on PR4 URLs for $400USD/month for a single link and the refering page may not even be relevant. Google figured out a long time ago that, once again, spammers would simply manipulate the SERPs by getting inbound links. That's one of the major reasons their algo has evolved over time to now place MUCH more importance on the relevance of the referring page, relevence of the referring page's inbound links, the link text used to link to your page, etc. PR is no longer the quick win it used to be. Alone, it does practically nothing for a page. If you'd like to perform an experiment... Write a page about a topic, and build inbound links to it but have them all come from irrelevant pages and use the link text "click here". Get that URL to PR4 or PR5... get hundreds of thousands of links to it. Then see how well you rank for your topic's keyword phrases. Your rankings will suck because the pages linking to your are not relevant and the link text tells Google your page is about "click here". Now do the same thing, but this time get links from a hundred relevant URLs with PR0 with link text containing the keywords you want to rank for. This page with 100 inbound PR0 links will outrank the page with hundreds of thousands of links for you keyword phrase. Reciprocal links are fine as long as they are from relevent URLs and having the link there to the other site adds some value to the sites visitor by pointing out another resouce. This will never get you penalized at Google and will always be considered as a 'good' link in their eyes. The reason Google dislikes reciprocal links generally is, again, spammers and others who create reciprocal linking schemes for the SOLE purpose of manipulating the rankings. If you have a site where you sell baby toys and you are reciprocal linking to online poker sites, mortgage sites, etc. that have absolutely nothing to do with baby toys, then it is obvious to Google (if they detect it or you get reported and a manual review uncovers the links) the ONLY reason a baby toy site would be reciprocal linking with an online gambling site would be to manipulate the SERPs... NOT because the link from the baby toy site adds value to their visitors experience. When Google catches people doing this they will typically penalize the URLs reciprocating so that all links on those pages are rendered worthless. Whether a reciprocal link is good or bad is ALL about relevance. If the pages trading links are relevant to one another a reciprocal link is good and will not get devalued due to a penalty. But if they are totally unrelated and you get caught by Google, you should expect a penalty.
Great posts. Recpirocal linking is no match for getting somer genuine, relevant IBL's pointing at your site.
I have to agree with Canonical on many of the points he raises. For me, reciprocal link building is about creating a network of focus-related websites, and steering traffic to each other. It's about the visitors, not the Google. And here's the weird part - Google seems to like that kind of "visitor value" networking, and rewards it with better SERPs overall.
Canonical is right. Reciprocal links are good if they add value to the system and provides a useful resource to users of both sites that are reciprocating.