Linking Strategies & Website Marketing.

Lets talk About Linking

Monthly Archives: April 2009

Reciprocal Linking, A Good or Bad Idea?

JD Reilly


A SEO (search engine optimization) tactic that is frequently used in an attempt improve website popularity is website linking. A link is a connection between two different websites. This method has been one of the best ways to get free traffic and is probably one of the main reasons of its common use.

Many jumped on the bandwagon and started to link to someone’s site for the favor of linking back to their website; this is called reciprocal linking. After all, the search engines just looked at the number of sites that linked to you, assuming the more links you had, the better your site was. Of course, it didn’t take people long to start getting as many sites as possible to link to them, no matter whether the sites were relevant or not, just to improve their ranking.

Ah, but our good friends at Google and other search engines figured out quickly that this was going on. They are now “policing” reciprocal link exchanges and de-valuing links from non-relevant sites. As you might think, the strategy of reciprocal linking is an old tactic and placed in the archives of SEO tactics. However, I see so many still promoting this outdated tactic and you should stay away from reciprocal link methods. Today, the best link is to have a one-way link from a relevant website coming into your site, rather than having to reciprocate the link and give them one back.

How to Achieve One-Way Links

Keep in mind that it is much better having a one-way link from a RELATED site than ten one-way links from most sites, especially competitors.

Here is the SECRET or key to achieving those incoming one-way links. Differentiate yourself from all the other sites out there. Now, that sounds like a daunting and almost impossible task given the nature of the internet. Give importance to your website by offering good content that your visitors will value. Michael Cheney teaches this algorithm, “Good content creates traffic which translates into sales.”

It’s vital that you understand how search engines work to achieve the success you desire.

Derek Gehl speaks about the “basics” of the search engines.

1. Algorithm – this is a “formula” used by search engines to figure out how relevant your site is for people doing the searching. The search engine will look at your site’s content, your keywords, your inbound links, and so on, and then calculate your position on the search results page.

2. Page Rank – this is calculated by the search engines and is a measure of how they value your site. To calculate it, Google and friends look at factors like your content, and the number of one-way links pointing to your site. The links are an important factor in the calculation. The more other sites consider you to be a valuable and relevant resource (and therefore link to you), the more Google will think so too.

3. Link Popularity – now that we know what links are, consider the popularity of those links as defined in this article; one-way links.

4. Keyword Phrase – this is an extension of “keywords.” It is based upon the research that when people look for keywords to target they are looking for keyword phrases, which contain 2, 3, 4 (or more) words. The value in using keyphrases is that you can be a lot more specific about what your site (or individual pages within the site) is about. In other words, if someone is searching for “televisions” they are more likely to look for “plasma televisions” or “Sony Bravia plasma televisions.”

5. Site Structure – This means the way your website is organized, how the pages are linked together and how your menu works (some people refer to site structure as the “information architecture”).

The structure of your site helps your visitors move more freely through the pages. It also allows them to find the information they’re looking for more quickly. This can be helpful in improving your rankings in the search engines. A well structured site that has all of the relevant pages carefully linked together is ranked as relevant and related content in the eyes of the search.

Link popularity is only one aspect of creating a successful website for ranking within the search engines. If you follow this outline then you will differentiate yourself from your competitors and that daunting task will become more encouraging.

If you link to someone’s site, and they link back to you, that’s considered a reciprocal link… and the search engines do NOT like them. It has become critically important to get those 1-way INCOMING links from sites that are related to your niche. Just remember, some kinds of links (one-way) can help your search engine placement, while others (reciprocal) might actually hurt it.



Reciprocal Linking Guide Lines For SEO

Brian Garvin


Link building is one of the easiest ways to increase a website’s search engine ranking and when the webmaster is faced with the seemingly insurmountable task he or she resorts to link building or reciprocal linking to improve the rank of the website’s search engine.

In the act of developing search engine rankings, one of the easiest and cheapest ways is to link build, of which reciprocal linking is a means. The act of link building is often very complicated and time consuming. But reciprocal linking is one of the easiest and cheapest methods of increasing a website’s search engine ranking. The act of exchanging links between websites is called reciprocal linking.

The act of reciprocal linking is helpful for the webmaster or web administrator. A webmaster agrees to post the link of another website in his or her website in exchange for the other webmaster doing the same. The process of reciprocal linking is good and beneficial situation for both the webmasters.

This method enables the website to gain many inbound links. The act of convincing other website owner to post a link on a certain website is not too difficult as these websites too gain inbound links in the process of posting their links.

Reciprocal linking is a good search engine optimization strategy. One important fact is that with good exchange linking strategy the bad effects of reciprocal linking could be done away with. There are a few steps in achieving this objective. One of this is the search engine status of the prospective link partner. A webmaster or web administrator should search for reciprocal links with websites or web directories that have high search engine rankings.

The ranks of the sites that will give the inbound links are more valued with more than the usual seriousness and they are given due importance. The webmaster needs to consider the ranking of the actual page where the inbound link is to be posted. If the page where the link is to be posted has a zero rank, it is going to have a bearing on the website status.

The webmaster should choose relevant websites. The inbound links from similar content websites carry more weight than the content which is unrelated to the website of the prospective webmaster to whose website the links are going to be posted. The webmaster should check the position of the links in the website of the web partner. It has been found that some webmasters trick their partner webmaster into giving them inbound links without giving them the adequate information on the respective links.

The webmaster should check the position of the links in the partner webmaster’s pages. Information about the link is one of the most important a strategies to achieve the search engine optimization that every webmaster looks forward to and reciprocal linking is one of means or be adequately informed about this link. This is the connection between search engine optimization and reciprocal linking. Why don’t you try it yourself and see it working for you?



Acquire Permanent One-Way Links

Gen Wright


on the Internet is all about building quality back links. The more back links you get for your website, the higher your search engine rankings will be. The problem is, it’s not easy to get back links to your site.

In general, there are 2 ways to get back links to your site. You can either buy them, or you can get them for free by submitting your site to web directories. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each approach.

1) Buying links.

Many internet marketers have resorted to buying links to get back links quickly. There are several types of link buying deals you can look into. You can buy monthly links, or you can buy permanent links. Monthly deals require you to pay a monthly fee for the one way link that you place on another website. This may range from $5 to $100 upwards, depending on the page rank of the website you are advertising on. When buying links, try to buy links that are embedded in the content. Avoid buying site wide links. Google may penalize your site if you get this wrong.

Permanent links sound like a better deal because you only have to pay once. But good permanent link deals are harder to come by. To find such deals on websites with high page rank is close to impossible.

2) Web directory submission.

Now that you are familiar with permanent links and monthly links, let’s discuss web directory submissions.

Web directories are websites that are setup to organize links so that visitors can find the websites that they are looking for easily. Remember Yahoo web directory? That is probably one of the first web directories that came online. It became hugely popular, and went on to become the giant Yahoo that we know today.

When you submit your links to web directories, you are actually acquiring one way permanent back links. But you can only achieve your goal if your links are approved by the directory owners. Some web directories are free, while others are paid. Usually, you may be asked to pay a small fee if the web directory has a high page rank. Stick to free web directories if budget is a concern.

On the Internet, there are literally thousands of web directories. Many of them allow submissions for free. Some may ask for a reciprocal back link, but many do not.

To accelerate the link building process, it is advisable to outsource all your web directory submissions activities to professional link building service providers. This will free up your time so you can focus on other aspects of your Internet business.

Since the price is often rather affordable, there is little reason not to outsource. Experienced submitters will be able to complete the work for you in a matter of hours.