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Link Exchanges and Reciprocal Links --> Bad?

by GeorgR.
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
There are still a ton of those types of sites/directories out there where you may submit your link "for free" when you put a reciprocal link to them on your own site.

Obviously this will result in a "you link to me and I link to you" scheme which is hardly a good idea, correct?
#> #bad #exchanges #link #links #reciprocal
  • Profile picture of the author SEMaster
    Link exchange? NO WAY !!! Days of link exchange strategy had been over a long ago.

    Google guidelines on link schemes may help to clarify: http://support.google.com/webmasters...n&answer=66356
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  • Profile picture of the author beasty513
    If you care about your website and its ranking

    you wouldn't do it.


    Also, most of the FFA sites are pretty much just

    filled spammy links.


    You're literally telling Google, any other major search engine, or directory

    that you don't care about quality if you get involved.
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  • Profile picture of the author hostdare
    Now there is no value of reciprocal links.But yes if you are getting high PR quality link relevant to your site then you can take that link.Otherwise recently more emphasis is on social networking sites like Facebook,Google+,stumble upon,hubpages etc....
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  • Profile picture of the author patco
    According to me, do not do link exchange ... or at least use 3 or 4 way link exchange:

    A -> B
    B -> C
    D -> A (the owner of C and D is the same!) but do NOT link C and A!

    I hope you got the idea!
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    • Profile picture of the author deepakrawat2789
      Originally Posted by patco View Post

      According to me, do not do link exchange ... or at least use 3 or 4 way link exchange:

      A -> B
      B -> C
      D -> A (the owner of C and D is the same!) but do NOT link C and A!

      I hope you got the idea!
      Agree with you Patco, now its the best way to get link by 3-4 way link exchange....
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    • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
      Originally Posted by patco View Post

      According to me, do not do link exchange ... or at least use 3 or 4 way link exchange:

      A -> B
      B -> C
      D -> A (the owner of C and D is the same!) but do NOT link C and A!

      I hope you got the idea!
      What he said....
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  • Profile picture of the author DizenSounds
    direct link exchanges haven't been effective for years. I mean years. I remember helping clients over 5 years ago that couldn't rank at all, take a look at their backlinks and they are all reciprocal links.

    After going through and cleaning up the links at that time, before link removal was even an idea, we could finally help get those clients ranking again.

    The only way to do link exchanges is to do something along the lines of what patco said. But even then that's not very effective as the link exchanges are always very easy to track. Most are on obscure internal pages with URLs that say linkexchange.php, links.php, /links/...

    I would advise against this type of linkbuilding.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by DizenSounds View Post

      . But even then that's not very effective as the link exchanges are always very easy to track. Most are on obscure internal pages with URLs that say linkexchange.php, links.php, /links/...
      Thats not how three way link exchanges are done. You are confusing two way with three way. Three way link exchanges are not easy to track. When done right they are undetectable because they are exactly like common natural link patterns.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

        Thats not how three way link exchanges are done. You are confusing two way with three way. Three way link exchanges are not easy to track. When done right they are undetectable because they are exactly like common natural link patterns.
        I call my 3 way linking, "link washing."

        Any directory asking for a linkback is low level to begin with. Low
        level does not mean hurting. It's just pretty useless to do.

        Paul
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        • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
          Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

          I call my 3 way linking, "link washing."

          Any directory asking for a linkback is low level to begin with. Low
          level does not mean hurting. It's just pretty useless to do.

          Paul
          Three way link exchanges have nothing to do with directories. You would have to be dealing with a three way link exchange partner that has two directory sites.

          Sigh....
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  • Profile picture of the author Moneymaker2012
    Link exchange used to be very effective and easy to get links but now it's not a good for your site, it can be caught easily and not good for your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author bermuda
    Exchanging links with a few high-quality websites can be still effective and useful but do not even think about exchanging links with directories. Some of such online link resources are actually link farms with bad reputation and as soon as you link out to them, your rankings may suffer a quick drop. If you get some one-way links from directories, that is quite acceptable but do not use reciprocal links involving some poor directories.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    When you have sites with real content you tend to not care what anyone else thinks about reciprocal links.

    Example, hxxp://animal.discovery.com (screenshot below).

    OP, the problem isn't reciprocal links, the problem is those free for all links are junk.




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  • Profile picture of the author WebMeUp
    Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

    Link Exchanges and Reciprocal Links --> Bad?
    That depends.

    You know, things have changed and will continue to change. Some techniques that used to work, stopped working some years ago. Link exchange and getting links form free directories are one of them.

    Links are still valuable though. Just look at how much referral traffic comes through relevant links. So any link coming from a relevant site can potentially bring you a lot of value. No matter whether it is a reciprocal one or not.

    So, you just need to be careful and make smarter link building decisions.     So reciprocal links and link exchange is a good idea when:
    • you are doing a link exchange because the traffic is likely to convert;
    • you are doing a link exchange because it provides a relevant resource useful to your audience.
    • you don't exchange links on a large scale and do that only with relevant, good-quality websites.
    And that's definately a bad idea if:
    • you are you doing link exchange in order to boost Pagerank;
    • you are doing a link exchange to boost your rankings.
    As for links from directories, links from highly-rated Web directories like DMOZ, Yahoo! can work great for your site.

    But beware of low quality shady directories - submitting your site there may put your hard earned rankings at risk!
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