Reciprocal links

Hi All,

I'm working on a building links into a site. Of all the 30 - 40 sites I've so far looked at into getting links, maybe 1/4 of them require reciprocal links. My question is this, do you all do recip. linking. I'd rather not have a page of links to sites who may have good page rank, but who don't have very much value to the clients to the site. But if it boosts traffic enough then perhaps it'd be worth it to do so.... thoughts? I know it's not really a yes or no question (though maybe it is) but I'd be interested in hearing folks thoughts.

I've tried to use link bilging once, but it did not showed any significant effect. So from my experience, I can say that paid links or banners are more effective.

Thanks for the response.

In general, reciprocal links are bad for SEO and should be avoided. Here's why:

1) They are a clear attempt to manipulate the search results which is a big no-no. That's why Google specifically outs them in their webmaster guidelines. Basically they see it as vote swapping. If you have an excessive amount of reciprocal links you run the risk of incurring penalties. (No one knows how many it takes to incur a penalty so it isn't wise to push your luck).

2) You risk being considered part of a link farm. If you link to a website that is consider a link farm and they link back to you, you may be seen as being part of the link farm. Link farms violate the search engine's TOS and are a quick way to get banned.

3) The links themselves carry virtually no value, or worse, cause you to lose strength from your pages. Because the links are on unrelated pages or pages that have little value for your niche (e.g. wrong context) prevents them from holding any value in the search engine's eyes. What little value they may have gets lost when you send a link back to their website thus negating any value that link may have had. Even worse, if your link is "worth" more then their link you will actually be hurting your site with that link exchange.

4) Many webmasters are dishonest and will remove your link or hide it from the search engines. No incoming link means no gain for you.

Link exchanges should be saved for websites in your niche that are well established and ahead of you in the rankings. A great suggestion in the SEO Guide is to do a content link exchange with related sites (see Buying Links & Link Exchanges).

Thanx for the link to the seo guide.