My competition is ranking high with reciprocal links

[belgirl]

Hi all--I am trying to rank a website for a very competitive keyword. One of my competitors is ranked #4 for this keyword. He only has a PR2 and has a little over 1,000 backlinks on Yahoo; but I would say over half of these links are just reciprocal! Ugh! I thought Google frowned on this? To beat him out, do I succumb to the reciprocal route and use his same links or just keep building one-way backlinks?

[thmgoodw]

Originally Posted by belgirl

Hi all--I am trying to rank a website for a very competitive keyword. One of my competitors is ranked #4 for this keyword. He only has a PR2 and has a little over 1,000 backlinks on Yahoo; but I would say over half of these links are just reciprocal! Ugh! I thought Google frowned on this? To beat him out, do I succumb to the reciprocal route and use his same links or just keep building one-way backlinks?

Are we talking link exchanges, junk link directories, or what? There are lots of different types of reciprocal links.

If a site has 1000 links and ranks well in google, you shouldn't assume that some or even most of them carry significant weight with the ranking. Do what you are doing and get good links.

[belgirl]

Mostly link exchanges and some directories.

Originally Posted by thmgoodw

Are we talking link exchanges, junk link directories, or what? There are lots of different types of reciprocal links.

If a site has 1000 links and ranks well in google, you shouldn't assume that some or even most of them carry significant weight with the ranking. Do what you are doing and get good links.

[caroline42]

Originally Posted by belgirl

Hi all--I am trying to rank a website for a very competitive keyword. One of my competitors is ranked #4 for this keyword. He only has a PR2 and has a little over 1,000 backlinks on Yahoo; but I would say over half of these links are just reciprocal! Ugh! I thought Google frowned on this? To beat him out, do I succumb to the reciprocal route and use his same links or just keep building one-way backlinks?

Ever thought about "smart" on-page optimization. Can do magic in certain cases. (May be you competitor's done a bit of it.)

[jasonmorgan]

did you check individual pages?

that is where the tricksy hobbits stuff a lot of backlinks as well.

and there is nothing wrong with reciprocal links.

as SEO nerd rumor has it, they don't share as much link love or are discounted in some way and having too many can look spammy but when I get the call from CNN asking for a reciprocal link I'll be sure to approve it.

[Myster]

One way backlinks always beat reciprocal links. I would go after their links and try to get one way links. Title relevance isn't necessary but it does help! Try to find links that you competitor has linking to them and check the homepage's PR. I would go after the backlinks that belong to highest TLD PR...You don't need too many links to rank high. You can get 15 - 20 Good backlinks and outrank them...

Cheers

[jasonmorgan]

One way backlinks always beat reciprocal links.

You can get 15 - 20 Good backlinks and outrank them.

Very bold statements.

Your suggested methods of duplicating a competitors backlinks to beat them are accurate but there are too many variables involved to make assumptions about reciprocal links, number of quality links and what it will take to outrank another site.

[belgirl]

Well it looks like (not counting repeats) he has:
518 Links - PR0
24 links - PR1
22 Links - PR2
3 Links - PR3
6 Links - PR4

For his anchor text, the highest keyword density is not even the keyword phrase I am trying to rank for...

[belgirl]

Agreed. I already have a ton of backlinks with much higher PR than he does and my domain name is almost 8 years old....

Originally Posted by jasonmorgan

Very bold statements.

Your suggested methods of duplicating a competitors backlinks to beat them are accurate but there are too many variables involved to make assumptions about reciprocal links, number of quality links and what it will take to outrank another site.

[Myster]

Originally Posted by jasonmorgan

Very bold statements.

Your suggested methods of duplicating a competitors backlinks to beat them are accurate but there are too many variables involved to make assumptions about reciprocal links, number of quality links and what it will take to outrank another site.

True, but I meant in general. To make myself clear what I meant was - you don't always need to have thousands of links pointing to your page in order to outrank another site. Take a look at what belgirl says:

Agreed. I already have a ton of backlinks with much higher PR than he does and my domain name is almost 8 years old....

She has an aged domain which does count and a ton of backlinks, but still is working on beating the competition.

If it's google we're talking about then it is obvious they care about relevancy.

I think that with a highr PR and good quality links you should focus more on On page.

If it was up to me...I would first add a few more posts/ pages related to the keyword (May want to use LSI as the title) and make sure that it links with the main keyword back in the content to the page you are trying to rank.

See what happens.

If there is no improvement...Save the page as is word for word and work on it. change the title a bit, and check your Semantic Data. you can use the w3.org tool Search google for "Semantic Data Extractor"

You could always change it back!

I do it all the time and it's fine.

Hope this helps...Good luck

[belgirl]

OK thanks for the input! I will post an update when I see some movement!

[kezz08]

is their site an aged domain?

[SouthamptonAngel]

There is a bit of a myth about reciprocals not having much value. I frequently see sites doing well largely with reciprocal links. A good link is a good link.

[belgirl]

No--he ranks for keywords that wouldn't apply to my website. I am also trying to rank for other keywords as well...

Originally Posted by zellandia

is that only your competitor mainpage backlink?
in my opinion is try to rank well on sub topic /long tail keyword first. because the stonger your sub topic it help your main keyword become more powerfull.
mybe you should check his backlink on other page.

[dburk]

Hi belgirl,

After reading all of your posts in this thread I think that you need to consider some basics of SEO that I could not tell if you have learned.

First and foremost it's important to understand that search engines don't rank websites, they rank web pages. Each and every page of your website can target its' own unique set of keywords.

The next basic concept you need to understand is that search engines rank pages in order of relevance, not page rank or number of backlinks. Each page will be scored for relevance and sorted accordingly.

Your web page's relevance score is influenced by a number of factors including elements of your page and elements of pages that link to yours. The key to outperforming your competitors is to earn a higher relevancy score.

You need to understand how each element effects your relevancy score and maximize these elements both on your page as well as the pages linking to your page. This applies both to pages on your own website as well as pages on external websites linking back to yours.

If you study the SERPs you will see many examples of pages with very few links that outrank pages on websites that have tons of backlinks, PR and domain authority. A single well placed backlink could easily be worth more than a thousand FFA backlinks.

Some folks have the misguided notion that ranking is simply getting more backlinks than your competitor. That's not how it works.

I know you are looking for a simple easy to implement solution, but you will benefit the most, in my opinion, if begin studying and implementing techniques that satisfy the goals of the search engines, which are aligned with goals of the search engine users: Relevant and useful content, topically organized and easy to find understand.

Relevancy is not an absolute value

The search engine robots examine specific elements and calculate a relative relevancy score for each element and use a proprietary algorithm to weight each factor for the final relevancy score used to rank your page in the SERP. If you first seek to understand how each element effects your relevancy and then optimize your pages and backlinks as well as other promotional strategies, you can likely outrank your competitors with far less effort.

Use the Google AdWords Keyword tool to find the keywords that are relevant to your web page. You will be given a list that is sorted by relevance. If you are not finding your targeted keyword at the top of the list, then you need have failed to optimize your page properly. Work on that until you have it right.

You might want to compare your competitor's page to your own, using this tool, it could be very enlightening. Also, study a sample of your backlinks with this tool and then do the same with your competitor's backlinks. If you do enough of this you will begin to see a pattern of how relevance plays a major role in all of your SEO efforts.

Yes, it easier to just say a backlink is a backlink and all you need is more backlinks. But how accurate is that?

[belgirl]

Hi--thanks for the input. Already knew all this however.

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi belgirl,

After reading all of your posts in this thread I think that you need to consider some basics of SEO that I could not tell if you have learned.

First and foremost it's important to understand that search engines don't rank websites, they rank web pages. Each and every page of your website can target its' own unique set of keywords.

The next basic concept you need to understand is that search engines rank pages in order of relevance, not page rank or number of backlinks. Each page will be scored for relevance and sorted accordingly.

Your web page's relevance score is influenced by a number of factors including elements of your page and elements of pages that link to yours. The key to outperforming your competitors is to earn a higher relevancy score.

You need to understand how each element effects your relevancy score and maximize these elements both on your page as well as the pages linking to your page. This applies both to pages on your own website as well as pages on external websites linking back to yours.

If you study the SERPs you will see many examples of pages with very few links that outrank pages on websites that have tons of backlinks, PR and domain authority. A single well placed backlink could easily be worth more than a thousand FFA backlinks.

Some folks have the misguided notion that ranking is simply getting more backlinks than your competitor. That's not how it works.

I know you are looking for a simple easy to implement solution, but you will benefit the most, in my opinion, if begin studying and implementing techniques that satisfy the goals of the search engines, which are aligned with goals of the search engine users: Relevant and useful content, topically organized and easy to find understand.

Relevancy is not an absolute value

The search engine robots examine specific elements and calculate a relative relevancy score for each element and use a proprietary algorithm to weight each factor for the final relevancy score used to rank your page in the SERP. If you first seek to understand how each element effects your relevancy and then optimize your pages and backlinks as well as other promotional strategies, you can likely outrank your competitors with far less effort.

Use the Google AdWords Keyword tool to find the keywords that are relevant to your web page. You will be given a list that is sorted by relevance. If you are not finding your targeted keyword at the top of the list, then you need have failed to optimize your page properly. Work on that until you have it right.

You might want to compare your competitor's page to your own, using this tool, it could be very enlightening. Also, study a sample of your backlinks with this tool and then do the same with your competitor's backlinks. If you do enough of this you will begin to see a pattern of how relevance plays a major role in all of your SEO efforts.

Yes, it easier to just say a backlink is a backlink and all you need is more backlinks. But how accurate is that?

[dburk]

Originally Posted by belgirl

Hi--thanks for the input. Already knew all this however.

Okay great then. I guess this post made me wonder:

Originally Posted by belgirl

Agreed. I already have a ton of backlinks with much higher PR than he does and my domain name is almost 8 years old....

None of those factors have anything to do with relevance, which IS the deciding factor in where you rank.

I have no doubt that you will easily overtake your competitor by employing that which you already knew. I hope my lengthy reply might help someone else reading this thread.

[sweetfranky]

I just wanted to chime and say reciprocals do matter. My primary site has a lot of reciprocal links with related companies and I rank #2 for my main 2 keywords. Just make sure that the links are real quality companies related to your business.

[belgirl]

That statement was in response to this statement:

"You can get 15 - 20 Good backlinks and outrank them." If that were the case, I would be outranking them, correct? It's not just backlinks, and it's not just relevance either, because as attested to Angela's backlinks, you can have profile backlinks on sites not relevant at all to your topic and still rise in the SERP's because of the one-way backlinks.

Originally Posted by dburk

Okay great then. I guess this post made me wonder:


None of those factors have anything to do with relevance, which IS the deciding factor in where you rank.

I have no doubt that you will easily overtake your competitor by employing that which you already knew. I hope my lengthy reply might help someone else reading this thread.

[kkchoon]

Try tracking the result yourself...

See how many Angela backlinks you can outrank those pages, if they use High PR directories, it may requires more links.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by belgirl

That statement was in response to this statement:

"You can get 15 - 20 Good backlinks and outrank them." If that were the case, I would be outranking them, correct? It's not just backlinks, and it's not just relevance either, because as attested to Angela's backlinks, you can have profile backlinks on sites not relevant at all to your topic and still rise in the SERP's because of the one-way backlinks.

I did find issues with that post as well, but for reasons I believe very different than yours. I believe it is definitely possible to outrank a page that has thousands of backlinks with a relatively small number of well placed backlinks.

I believe relevance is the primary factor in effective backlinks and is absolutely essential to have any direct benefit.

The assertion "you can have profile backlinks on sites not relevant at all to your topic and still rise in the SERP's" Is not quite right in my opinion. Search engines rank web page not websites, so the relevance of the page is absolutely essential while the remainder of the website plays no direct role.

I have never heard of of anyone getting direct SEO benefit from irrelevant backlinks, it just doesn't happen. If you get a backlink from a page that doesn't have your target keyword anywhere on that page it won't help you rank for that keyword. I challenge anyone reading this thread to present evidence of irrelevant backlinks directly helping you rank for a target keyword.

[belgirl]

We aren't talking about irrelevant keywords. We are talking about non-relevant sites with targeted keywords. Two different things my friend. But back to the original question at hand....

Has anyone else had experience with reciprocal links boosting your rankings?

[dburk]

Originally Posted by belgirl

We aren't talking about irrelevant keywords. We are talking about non-relevant sites with targeted keywords. Two different things my friend. But back to the original question at hand....

Has anyone else had experience with reciprocal links boosting your rankings?

Yes, I agree, and that was my point. There is no such thing as site relevance in SEO. There is page relevance and it is THE central concept of SEO. Search engines rank web pages, not websites. There is no keyword targeting benefit from a backlink on a page that isn't relevant to your keyword.

However, that is not to say there is no benefit in getting links from relevant websites. The more relevant the website the more direct link traffic you will recieve from your backlink. In fact, you are likely to triple the benefit of a backlink by choosing links from relevant websites, assuming you goal is targeted traffic.

Which brings me to your question, yes there can be benefit from reciprocal links, but the benefit is nearly nil unless it's on a page that gets traffic. Most websites participating in reciprocal linking schemes bury those links in a page set aside just for link partners. Search engines, Google in particular, are very good at identifying and devaluing all links on those pages.

The bottom line is that one well placed link is probably worth at least 10,000 of those reciprocal links on link partner pages.

Your efforts will payoff if you focus on quality backlinks. A quality backlink is one placed on a page that has visitors that are likely to find that link is to a page that contains content that is both useful and topically relevant. The greater the number of visitors that will find your backlink useful, the greater the quality of the backlink.

SEO is a means to a goal, not the goal itself. Your true goal should be targeted traffic from humans, not robot traffic. Quality backlinks, on average, tend to generate twice the direct link traffic that search engines are capable of delivering. Quality backlinks continue to send you targeted traffic even when the search engines are dancing or your entire website is de-indexed. And, oh yes, quality backlinks will boost your search engine rankings.

Reciprocal links placed on link partner pages are not quality backlinks and give little or no benefit. They did work at one time, but Google is very good at identifying and devaluing them. You competitor may be out ranking you, but those reciprocal links are probably not contributing much.

Google views reciprocal links much like paid links, and while they won't punish the pages linked to, they will devalue all links on pages that are identified as paid link or reciprocal link pages. They often take the extra step of de-indexing link partner pages if it fits the profile of a link exchange program.