I realise this subject has been addressed plenty of times before but I wanted to wade in because its still a topic there’s some confusion over and I’d say some fairly bad advice floating around about.
The title of this post obviously starts with an assumption, that reciprocal links do still help your search rankings. To this day I’ve never seen any tangible evidence that link swapping when done correctly can harm your rankings, as some prominent SEO’s claim, and in almost every case links gained in this way will have at least a small benefit to your rankings, all other things being equal (which they never are- more on this later).
So there’s plenty of occassions where links might be reciprocated and plenty of tactics which are used to build 2 way links but essentially there are 2 types of reciprocal links:
- The types of links which sit on ‘links’ pages and are there usually just for the purpose of link exchange
- The type of links which occur (often naturally) when 1 site links to a page on another site from within an article while the other site also links back from one of their own articles. You get this lots with blogs becuase bloggers who read each other stuff will often link to one another regularly.
There’s a persistent argument spread, I believe wrongly, around the SEO world that because a link is sat on a page called ‘links.html’ or ‘resources.html’ it is immediately less valuable than if it were sat on any other page. And furthermore if there’s a link back from the other site also on a page called ‘links.html’ or something similar the link is further devalued. I’ve heard some go so far as to say this type of linking does your site more harm than good- in almost every case I’ve seen this is nonsense.
There are however a number of very real reasons you don’t want all your links to come from links pages including:
- Links pages don’t attract any external link weight, that is to say I can think of very few reasons any site would organically link to a links page on another site, unless it was a really useful list of hard to find resources. This means all the link weight associated with links pages will usually come from internal links. This isn’t the end of the world, its just important to realise a page with no external links can only ever offer a certain amount of value to you through a link.
- Links pages link out to large numbers of external sites- again in itself this isn’t a problem. Pages on popular directories can link out to hundreds of sites and still pass some value/ PageRank to each one but if a site is small and has few external links itself and links out to 100 sites from 1 page each of those links is going to have relatively little weight.
- Links pages don’t have enough content to make the external links contextual meaning unless there’s a high degree of relevance between the two sites involved in the exchange and all of the other links on the same page are equally as relevant a links page link is unlikely to pass the kind of authority which tells the search engines “the website at the end of this link is the best resources for [enter keyword here]“.
- Sites who engage in links page reciprocal linking are often low quality and attract dubious outbound links. This is by far the biggest problem with mass reciprocal link exchange IMO. The types of sites who engage in it aren’t your trusted universitys, local government or library sites which pass stacks of authority. They tend not even to be prominient bloggers or media sites who make excellent link targets. They tend to be small businesses with a fairly limited link profile (meaning they often only get their links from link exchange). Also these sites have a tendancy to link to dubious sources or fall foul of bait and switch tactics. This leads to your links being part of a bad neighbourhood- at an extreme end this could lead to penalties even if your site isn’t the one linking out to dodgy partners.
Dispite all this negativity I still think using link pages or reciprocal link exchanges has some merit, particularly if you are targeting some really easy keywords and just need a few links to put you on the map. For example if you owned a butcher shop in a row with 2 other shops and you wanted to rank for ‘butcher brighton’ getting a link from the baker and the newsagent on either side of you is probably a good idea and linking back to them is absolutely fine. Here’s what I’d avoid though:
- Mass link exchange networks
- Anything automated where you have to install code on your site (these are usually multi-way linking scemes rather than reciprocal actually)
- Linking to non-English speaking sites (higher spam risk with these)
- Linking off topic
The old test of ‘would you still be pursuing this link partnership if search engines didn’t exist’ is a great guide here. The local butcher and baker certainly would. The butcher and the Indian offshore data input company less likely.
Content based reciprocal links
Looking at all of the issues noted in the reasons links pages aren’t that great bit above it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to work out that many of these problems can be circumnavigated by swapping links on pages within your website rather than from dedicated links pages. I know of at least one company who specialise almost exclusively in this type of link building and with good results. This would probably count as one of those tactics which will work great for a bit, and in moderation. if it gets too widespread or spammy it might get devalued but as part of your overall link building effort this will work at the moment.
Why don’t search engines clamp down on reciprocal links?
Quite simply I don’t think they need to. If you go overboard with link swapping and create a reciprical link directory off the back of your site which you don’t properly regulate sooner or later you’re going to link out to some crap and get penialised. Aside from this its really in the best interests of the engines to keep links flowing around the web, particularly amoung small businesses who may find it hard to attract links in other ways. What’s more by tarring all links pages and reciprocal links with the same brush you’d be damaging some pretty useful links (along with a load of garbage) like this resources page on greenpeace.
Why most SEO’s don’t recommend reciprocal links
I sometimes think its in the best interests of the SEO industry to make things seem harder than they need to. Its really easy for a trusted SEO to say ‘reciprocal links don’t work anymore’ and find some anecdotal evidence to back it up. The problem wih all SEO conundrums is that its never a level playing field. While something might appear to be true like ‘links pages have no value’ actually there’s stacks of other factors at play and like with most things in life there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.
I will close by saying I personally very rarely use reciprocal link exchange and particularly not with links pages anymore. That says more about the size and nature of sites I work with than my views on whether they work or not. My best and final advice on the subject would be to make sure you’re using a good mix of link building tactics and whenever you’re linking out make sure its to quality sites.
