Do Reciprocal Links Hurt? Options

[Big Mountain]

Do reciprocal links hurt? I have found it very difficult to get reciprocal links compared to when I had a site back in 2004. Are search engines, specifically google, penalizing reciprocal links?

[EGOL]

Recip links are manipulation and the search engines know this. Most people believe that they have been significantly devalued for ranking a website. Some feel that they have a negative effect.

I spend zero time on recip links. Zero.

[lee.n3o]

This still intrigues me... As I know of a site, thats ranks in the top 3 for a VERY, VERY hard fought term... They have an SEO company (Well ..lol) getting there rankings, and 95% of what they have done is just recip link.

They even have a page which is just RAMMED with these recip links, in no order and include banners, images the works.. Its a total mess.. But in the end, they are top 3 for a term which I should expect is allowing them to turn over 100,000's of pounds.

So even though I am the same as EGOL, and don't spend anytime doing recip links... It is really starting to make me wonder.

[JohnMu]

I think the not-so-simple answer to this question is "would you do that if search engines didn't exist?"

If you link to a site and they decide to link back to you (perhaps even for an unrelated reason), those links may be providing value to your visitors and they may well be important to your site. However, just "exchanging links" for the sake of exchanging links (or even just as an attempt to influence search engines) is likely not to be that important to your visitors and for your site in general.

Lee, sometimes elements like that are very visible to visitors. That doesn't mean that they are also very important for search engines though . There are a lot of factors involved in crawling, indexing and ranking -- perhaps that site is just doing very well in some of the other factors (and perhaps it could even be doing better if it wasn't using reciprocal linking like that).

At any rate, in our Webmaster Guidelines we mention "Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.", "Examples of link schemes can include: (...) Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")" and "This is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results."

Hope it helps!
John

This post has been edited by JohnMu: Feb 20 2008, 08:17 AM

[projectphp]

Hurt is hard to discover, but if you are having troubles getting links, maybe they are a waste of time, and you could do something more worthwhile?

[Ruud]

Do reciprocal links hurt?

Hurt? God no! What an unsocial place the web would be if we couldn't link to each other. You would have to run alink checker just to make sure people in your blogroll aren't linking to you

No, purely in and by themselves links back and forth don't hurt.

I have found it very difficult to get reciprocal links

Ah.... but that, and I apologize for being rude, is insane. Why would you be looking and working for reciprocal links?!

If a link turns out or becomes reciprocal at one point <shrug> sure, why not... But I wouldn't be looking for them as if I prefer them. The type of link I prefer is Free. I take them all but I prefer the ones that send traffic.

Think of links as votes of confidence more than a "if you scratch my back I scratch yours".

Are search engines, specifically google, penalizing reciprocal links?

As I said above; no, not in and by themselves. But there are link patterns, reciprocal and not, which can be discounted (now or in the future....) or weighed against you, yes.

[Respree]

Do reciprocal links hurt?

From a ranking perspective, my guess would be, "No."

However, the more important question is, "Do they help?" Its really a battle isn't it? Millions upon millions are trying to figure out a way to beat the system. Search engineers are continually refining their algos, with the goal of creating a system can't be beat.

To me, this is low hanging fruit for the search engines. Think about the concept of "Hey, I'll link to you if you link to me." If ranking is based on popularity, wouldn't this concept be a prime example of false, misleading or manipulated popularity in the eyes of the judge and jury?

The fact is that all the search engines understandably hold their cards very close to their vest for obvious competitive reasons. Its all speculation, but if you think of it logically, wouldn't you discount or exclude reciprocal links if you were them? Its a system too easily manipulated, in the same spirit of keyword stuffing meta tags.

Like most people, the search engines don't like being manipulated.

This post has been edited by Respree: Feb 20 2008, 03:28 PM

[DianeV]

Well, Google has shared at least some of its stance regarding reciprocal linking -- see JohnMu's post above. It's clear that they're not crazy about excessive reciprocal links, nor about sites that link to "bad neighborhoods".

Building pages that people value enough to link to is far better (and less work) than trying to get people to exchange links with you. After all, you'd be building value into your website, and those types of pages tend to attract interest and links, probably for far longer than you're willing to chase people to exchange links with you.

As well, I guess I just feel that seeking links is not the most exciting way I could spend my time, which would set me up to have to think "I linked to him; is he still linking to me?" -- on a continual basis. Who wants to spend their time monitoring reciprocal links, let alone on an ongoing basis. Thing is, I think that links that people provide on their own are far more likely to remain over the long term than ones I (perish the thought) spent time asking for. So again, I think it's better to create pages that people want to link to on their own.

That said, we have a few blogs based on the WordPress software. Among other things, WordPress shows who's linked to the blog lately, and occasionally I've found a fantastic site that I end up linking to, but only because of its content.

P.S. I realize that this is counter to what some SEOs say about obtaining links, but there you go.

[bwelford]

Apart from the search engine effect, if they end up on a huge page with hundreds of others, then it may turn off some of your human visitors. I think some of these pages look most unprofessional. I can't figure whether that or spelling mistakes turns me off a website quicker.

[kensplace]

I agree with the above really, if a link is reciprocated naturally, it should not be a problem.

I dont force recips, but to be honest, I do see sites ranking better than me in google that do force reciprocals.

[SEO_AM]

Most everything is valued logically on Google. A reciprocal link is akin or similar to being referred to a business from either a customer or an aligned business. Which one would you trust... a referral to a product from somebody that sells the product or is getting a kickback? Or, would you trust a referral from users or non-compensated entities. Google most likely looks at recip's in the same way, e.g. a .edu recip or major .com recip is likely valued much higher by Google than a non-relevant or one of many thousand directory recips. It is only commone sense... use it.

This post has been edited by SEO_AM: Feb 24 2008, 02:34 PM

[EGOL]

Hello SEO_AM ! Good to see you here.

[lee.n3o]

I dont force recips, but to be honest, I do see sites ranking better than me in google that do force reciprocals.

I agree and that was my point... Althought you can beat them, but even though Google says don't recip... you still see sites that really just recip ONLY ranking VERY well... So it still makes you think - No matter what the T & C's say or anyone else

[glengara]

IMO there's a subtle difference between reciprocal and exchanged in that unlike the latter the former can occur by chance.

[jenny86]

i hope that they are not affecting the results too much, because i like exchaning links with friends or related websites.

[seotech]

Trading links with a small list of highly relevant and targeted websites will probably not hurt as this is what one would do if the search engines did not exist. Just keep the list small and on-target and don’t use it as your many form of link-building and you’ll be fine.

[dazzlindonna]

I haven't engaged in the whole "recip link" thing in years. I didn't like it back then either, mainly because those recip link pages filled with links are just plain dumb.

I'm not even real fond of "link building" as an activity. I'd rather spend my time getting noticed than getting links. That's the kind of activity that is generally more fun and more fruitful, in my opinion.

Maybe I should change my motto from "You'll never shine if you don't glow" to "Getting noticed is a better use of your time than getting links".

Nah...I'll stick with my original motto.

[bwelford]

By now I've trained my spam filter K9 to automatically assign link requests to the spam bucket. I don't want to waste my time on even considering them. There's very close to zero value in ranking terms.

[projectphp]

I think the issue is with what "recipricol links" means. We don't mean "links between two sites", we mean "links between sites forma page full of links to other sites".

If we take the litteral meaning, I think they are still a good idea. A good example is Bill's Blog roll. have a look and see how many link back. That is a recipricol link, but I would think it has some benefit, even for real people.

The waste of time is the other type of recipricol link, the "use software, email everyone it finds" kind.

[Thejspot]

I think we should also point out here that no all links are equal.

If I was Google..... pause to laugh ....... Reciprocal links going between two "resources" pages where the listing was the domain name and that's it. Who gives a s**t?

However... if we have a link in an appropriate point in a body of text to a site that is relevant and the site happens to have a link back to that site in another body of appropriate text, if I was Google, I would say that is relevant.