Reciprocal Linking is a Thing of the Past
Reciprocal linking is a fancy way of saying “link exchange,” and to some these methods might make perfect sense. It’s a sort of “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” arrangement. If you provide a link to your buddy, he will provide a link to you. It makes sense, right? What if you made friends with everyone in India? Why, you’d have a billion links!
Reciprocal Linking Then and Now
Well, that’s not how it works exactly. Sure, reciprocal linking is an interesting idea and truth be told there is no disadvantage to exchanging links with other websites or companies. Having a huge number of imbalanced links is probably better than having no links at all. Nevertheless, the question I am posing is: is reciprocal linking worth your time? I believe it is not, and frankly, it’s a thing of the past.
Reciprocal linking was big when the Internet just started—when webmasters wanted to promote their friends and vice-versa. This was before the dawn of social media, mind you, and so it wasn’t so much a connection as it was a mutually beneficial advertisement – and for back then, it was a smart move. Today, however, in the age when social media is king, you are still only advertising your buddy and vice versa. It’s a nice move, but not one that is going to be especially cost-efficient or traffic-friendly. Perhaps a few years ago, reciprocal linking was more appreciated than it currently is, but times have changed. The total number of links is no longer of great importance, not when compared to the strength and relevance of the links.
How to Impress the Search Engines
In other words, you’re not impressing search engines just because you’re creating links all over the place. The search engines are putting more emphasis on quality links, as in sites that are highly trafficked and better linked than your own. It’s an honor to be listed at say, Wikipedia or Stumble Upon. Not so much, to trade links with a dozen of your friends.
The primary goal in linkbuilding is to build trust and authority with major search engines. Unfortunately, because of many SPAM-crazy marketers out there, search engines have started to associate web directories made up of a high number of reciprocal links with low quality sites. Nowadays, they would rather you produce quality content and internal links, as well as quality one-way inbound linking. Instead of giving it all away for free, it is far wiser to control your outbound linking, making judicious decisions of what sites are really appropriate to your industry.
All that is required to penalize you in the rankings is the notion that your site is in the “wrong neighborhood”, as in wrong industries, SPAM sites, or low quality sites. If these are your friends, you’re not going to do anything with organic SEO.
It’s like the old parable. If you want to stop being a bad person, stop hanging the wrong crowds. It’s true in life and now it’s true in SEO. You’re much better off posting blog comments, publishing articles and press releases and interacting with bigger sites. Those quality links are worth climbing for!
