Reciprocal Links

[Jack]

How much importance is given to reciprocal links by search engines? Does it really helps for better results?

[Peter]

It is believed that the search engines give more importance to one way links as compared to reciprocal links. But the most important factors in link building are link relevance and quality. If these issues are in line then I don't think it would matter much whether it's a one-way link or a reciprocal link, it would just be considered a valuable link.

[harry]

Jack, what peter said is very true and what I would also like to suggest is;
while doing link exchange (reciprocal link exchange) try to check whether you will be benefited for pagerank from those. I mean those links should not be with nofollow tag. links with nofollow tag prevents google from crawling that links hence those links are of no use for gaining PR.

[Ryan]

Building high quality reciprocal links is one of the best ways to promote your business on the Internet. With Reciprocal linking you need to concentrate on getting links from other website hostings that have a similar theme like your website hosting. Links from related website hostings are more important to get the maximum benefit of link building. Also links from relevant website hostings will have a positive effect on your site's ranking, whether the links are one way links or reciprocal links is of less importance in such a scenario.

[rich]

Yea it's true that reciprocal links are given importance by the search engines and they also help in increasing one's website hosting traffic. The reciprocal links can also get better results for the website hosting if the links are of the same interest to the viewers as they would be more interested in that sort of links and not just any other links which are of no or mere relevance.

There is this new and unique concept of three way linking which also comes in the category of reciprocal linking but it is given more importance compared to the normal way of reciprocal linking and at the same time it is getting very much popular among the mases due to its acceptance and the level of priority given to them by some search engines.
Example: Suppose there are three website hostings X,Y and Z. So X linking to Y. Y linking to Z and Z linking to X is a type of three way reciprocal linking.

In this style of link building it is tried to present more natural links in the process of SEO and actually what the search engines are looking for which makes this linking process advanced than the normal reciprocal linking. To sum it up i guess that reciprocal linking is a good way to gain better results but it should be done with caution.

[harry]

Hey Rich,
3 way linkexchange are considered as an artificial means of boosting the popularity of both website hostings and are not counted by google. This technique of getting backlinks is considered as spam by google.
IMO don't go for 3 way exchange but try for natural one way backlinks.

[rich]

Yea right,,actually was not sure about the acceptance by google so i just mentioned " some engines" and not all. But checking the present scenario i guess that people are just going for the rankings given by google because of the popularity of the engine so may be it won't be advisable for people aiming for the same.

Anyways, harry what do you think if 3 way linking is used for other engines??

[Danny M]

Based on their experience, different people have different views on reciprocal links .IMO if the link is a quality link with good relevance then it’s a valuable link. It’s really difficult to predict what policies search engines apply for test the quality of links. They have multiple options to check that.
Nowadays reciprocal links are considered to be of less value by search engines compared to one way links.
However when you are concerned about the benefit from the RL, they are still effective enough to create the relationship with other website hostings.

[Peter]

Another benefit of reciprocal links with relevant theme website hostings is targeted traffic. The more times your site's link appears on other website hostings, the more visitors your own website hosting will receive. If you link with other website hostings in your genre, the traffic you receive from clicks will be already interested in your website hosting.

[Danny M]

Yes Peter, I completely agree with you on this fact. No worries even if the search engines do not give much importance to reciprocal links. You know that you are still benefiting from reciprocal links in form of getting more and more traffic everyday.

[harry]

Anyways, harry what do you think if 3 way linking is used for other engines??

Every search engine have its own algorithm based on which it gives value for backlinks for a particular website hosting.
I don’t think any search engine other than Google would have problem using 3 way link-exchange.

[Danny M]

I don’t think any search engine other than Google would have problem using 3 way link-exchange.

Well you never know Harry; According to the recent news all the three major search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN have adopted same standards for sitemap. May be in future we will see some more of type of common policies by these three. Sooner or later both yahoo and Msn will start following Google. What do you guys think?

[harry]

If such thing happened then the word " major search engines " may never be used ever, since every player would be fallowing
same strategy the results then obtained would be much same for all.

[Danny M]

Yes, you are absolutely right Harry. If all the major search engines have same strategy and function somewhat similarly, then there would be no fun in using them. Web marketing would become less competitive. All the search engines will lose their identity. No one in this world likes to lose his own identity!

[simpleSimon]

Avoid reciprical links - they no longer work. Google's updated it's algorithm so that now it can sniff them out in a second and not value them very highly. They wont penalise you for it though.

[w3bmaster]

I don't waste time with link exchanges
I only concentrate on one way
And also ... becaouse many people remove links after exchange ...

[kelvintrinit]

I don't waste time with link exchanges
I only concentrate on one way
And also ... becaouse many people remove links after exchange ...

Many people remove links after exchange but not all. And its more then obvious you will do the same if they remove your links. And ya i do agree with simon if you take a look over here "http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356" you will understand what google wants in terms of link exchange. And like others mentioned you should concentrate on one-way rather then reciprocal don't even think of going in to link farming unless you have made up your mind to get your site penalized by google

[Kim-C]

I don't waste time with link exchanges
I only concentrate on one way
And also ... becaouse many people remove links after exchange ...

It is true that Many people remover the links after exchanging, however there is a better side also. You should exchange the links with trusted parties, also you can monitor the link giving page if your link is remover you can also act the same

[Bill]

Here two more reasons for going for oneway links
1) If the opposite website has high rankings the the webmaster of that site will charge something for exchange of links.
2) More the links(dofollow) included in your page, the page load time will be more.

[phil555]

Rest is fine but I do not agree to

2) More the links(dofollow) included in your page, the page load time will be more.

external links added to a website would hardly make a difference in the page load time. Yes if you are referring to the banners of an external site, then yes there might be a slight delay, but its you would decide the dimensions and the size of the banner, and Im sure one would allow banner links that would not hamper the load time.