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Viewing Reciprocal Links - Good for SEO and Google Ranking?Reciprocal Links - Good for SEO and Google Ranking?
By Adam Smith
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One of the important factors in ranking well on search engines such as Google is ensuring that you have a number of links pointing from other websites to your website. However, what about reciprocal links? Are they beneficial or not? Introduction - the link phenomenon One of the important factors in ranking well on search engines such as Google is ensuring that you have a number of links pointing from other websites to your website. Website links can be a confusing thing. There are many terms used to describe them, including one-way links, reciprocal links, back-links, inbound links, etc. However, to explain what I'm talking about here - let's say you own ACME Shoe Sales, and you are on another website, say www.great-aussie-footwear.com, and you see a link that says 'Visit ACME Shoe Sales' and you click on it - and it takes you to ACME Shoe Sales. This helps the ranking of ACME Footwear. This type of link is called an 'inbound link' to ACME, or confusingly, is sometimes referred to as a back-link for the ACME website. These back-links or inbound links tell Google that someone else thinks your website is worth linking to. If lots of people think your website is important enough to create a link to, this tells the search engines that your website must be important. So how do you get these links to your website? There are many ways to do this, including posting messages in forums with links to your website, listing your business in online directory websites, getting business partners to link to you, paying people for links (a risky practice these days), and 'reciprocal links' where you agree to link to someone if they link to you. Many people still exchange links with others, hoping that they will rocket to the top of the search results because 'their cousin who's an IT guy told them that was how to get ranked on Google'. Reciprocal links - will they help? The answer is 'yes and no'. A few years ago, reciprocal linking alone would get you ranked well on the search engines. The problem was that everyone figured this out, and many professional SEO companies abused the practice and set up massive reciprocal linking programs. Have you ever received one of those spam emails from people asking you to link to them if they link to you? The practice is still alive and well. Given the disproportionate number of links that various websites obtained by this practice, the search engine companies caught on that most of this was an artificial phenomenon, and they started to discount the value of links pointing to a website when that website linked back to the linking partner. So they won't help? The answer is yes, and no. There are two benefits you get from a link from someone else's website that points to your website. Referral Benefit By this, we're talking about the fact that if someone is on another website, comes across your link, and clicks on it, your website receives a new visitor. If the site where the visitor found your link is related to your business, he or she could be a valuable website visitor. If a person found your link on an online gambling website and clicked on it by mistake, clearly, there is limited benefit to the visit. So typically speaking, referral benefit is strong when the link comes from a related website that is not competitive in your field (if you sell pillows, think bedding websites, if you sell tires, think car websites, etc.) Ranking Benefit Ranking benefit is what we discussed earlier, where the search engines will recognize this link as a vote of your website's importance and give you weighting/ranking for this. So back to reciprocal Links - will they help? The answer is 'yes and no' ... but this time, we'll try to answer the question! If a website owner approaches you, someone who has a website that is related to your industry but not competitive to your business, and you think that people on the other website might be the right sort of target audience you'd like to visit your website, then by all means exchange links with them! Forget about the search engine ranking issues - if this business attracts people who are the sort of people who would buy from or deal with your organization (i.e. same area, same interests, same product category) then having a link from their site to yours has enough inherent value to exchange links. The same applies to whether a link should go on your website. Are your visitors going to find it interesting? Will it add value to their experience of your website? If so - go for it. If a website from an overseas website approaches you, but you don't sell to overseas customers, or if a website from an unrelated industry approaches you, then don't exchange links in the hope that they will deliver strong rankings. On the issue of ranking, there is still much debate in the SEO industry about whether any rank is achieved from exchanging links. My personal view based on our SEO experience is that a small number of link exchanges with high-quality 'authoritative' websites in your industry will help to some extent. Be careful though, as linking to a range of useless link partners who have sites filled with thousands of spammy links could actually hurt your rankings. If the person asking you to exchange links fits this category, don't do it. About the Author: For more information please visit: www.salsaInternet.com.au. Article Source: 1st Rate Articles - http://1stRateArticles.com |
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