Letting SE's notice that links are reciprocal

[Martin333]

Hi all,

I have one webpage in my site that's like a "starting-page". 10 of those links are there because they link to me (thought... maybe this gets apreciated a bit by the SE's).

- Are there ways for me to make sure that SE's notice that those links are reciprocal?

- And: If a starting-page (with lot's of catagories) links to me, do I have to deep-link to that specific catagorie to make it reciprocal?

Thanks in advance guys!
Martin

[Advisor]

Why do you want the search engines to "notice that they're reciprocal"?

Link to sites/pages that make sense, and don't worry about it.

Jill

[Big Guerrilla]

Actually, it's not a bad idea to have links on one of your pages linking to major sites that link to you. Just try to balance out the page some i.e. don't have a page comprised only of links to sites that link to you.

Also, the SE's will find the reciprocal linkage on their own, so don't worry about that. However, I would link to the specific page you're linked from on the other site if possible, but just make sure that page you're linking to is spiderable. There are numerous spider emulators out there you can use to test that.

[Martin333]

Ahhh with a spider emulator... that's a good tip! So I don't waste valuable room for links to sites that can't be found :) Good!

Thanks!

[Dan0]

You may want to be careful (but not overly so) about reciprocal links with Google. They're definitely downgrading the status of these links (as they should), probably in response to the link farms (like Webseed), this has been going on at least since December.

This is not the official word of Google, but we did a pretty extensive survey when the December dance was over, to try to figure out what was happening - we found several "networks" that had dropped from high PR to very low, very quickly, where they pretty much just linked to each other.

I don't think reciprocal links hurt you (unless you have no other kind of links), but they aren't helping like they used to, at least with Google. Either way, I wouldn't go out of my way to make sure that any search engine can identify my reciprocal links.

I generally use a 2-domain strategy, where a secondary site links to all of the sites that link to the first site. It's cheap and effective, because getting links set up is only half the battle - the other half is getting search engines to recognize them.

-- Dan Thies :)

[claudiasmt]

Dano -- can you explain your two domain strategy further?


I have several sites that I have listed mine -- but are now requesting reciprocal links. I would like to create a separate page that lists these sites.

Not sure if this will help much with my page rank at Google however...

[manwah]

Just to throw my $0.02 in.

Harping back to what Jill said, it is always best to think of linking strategies from a visitors point of view. Will this link be useful to your audience?

I have been known to be guilty of over concentrating on link popularity from a search engines point of view, but at the end of the day don't just consider linking to a site purely because you think it will help with your link pop.

View your links page as a resource, and if you provide quality links to other related sites your visitors will come to trust you (and as we all know, that leads to better customer relationships and more repeat business).

Anyway referring directly back to Martins questions.

1. By linking back to the pages you are already doing the most you can to make sure the SE's notice it (without crossing into that 'grey area' of SEO work).

2. Are you sure you want to link back to this page? It sounds like a directory, and if you link back to the category page, is it filled with your competitors? If the answer is yes then I would say it's not worth it. There are other questions worth answering before linking to this resource, like does it allow spiders, does it use plain html links and, of course, would it provide value. Just a few things you might like to consider.

Hope that helps but as I said, just my two pennies worth.

M

[Dan0]

Claudia:

There's a longer explanation of this in my articles "Search Engine Strategies For Mini-Sites," and "Creating Link Popularity - Without Getting Banned," which you can find by searching the article titles on Google, or in the back issues of my newsletter.

The basic idea is that you have a website that's primarily a sales letter. You can't really optimize it all that much, because the sales copy is more important than anything else. Great rankings don't help if you can't close sales. I call this the "content conundrum," where your site can't have much content because it's a distraction from your site's real purpose.

The other problem is with linkage - if you swap links on your sales letter, you're crazy, right? (one solution is to swap links, but hide the return link in a testimonial, but this means you can only swap links with raving fans of your product.)

The two-domain strategy is to leave your sales letter alone, and create a second site that will have some content on it, and that you can use for reciprocal links.

Site A is your sales letter. Site B is your content site. Site C is the site you want to swap links with. You ask Site C to link to Site A, and you tell them you'll put a link back from Site B. Site A's link pop grows, and so does Site C's. If you explain the strategy, most folks will also understand that if they link to Site B, they're helping themselves, so it becomes more popular as well and you get two links (to both of your sites) for every outbound link you put on Site B. Site B links to Site A, but Site A should not link to Site B.

The end result of this approach is that you get more traffic to your sales letter, which leads to more sales. Your link partner gets a link back from a "real website" that has content on it. Stick to sites that are related to your subject, and you have a powerful strategy.

I don't recommend swapping links with unrelated sites - every time people do this it dilutes the accuracy of search engine results, which in the long run is bad for all of us.

-- Dan Thies

[Dan0]

M:

Very good points. If you're linking to irrelevant sites, or sites that just aren't up to snuff quality-wise, you're not helping yourself.

Linking to a directory, though, even if it includes my competitors, doesn't bother me at all, because I know they're not smart enough to beat me anyway. If they are, one little link won't make much difference, and the link back from the directory is good for me.

Dan0