Downfall Of Reciprocal Linking
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All the literature, articles, experts and e-zines devoted to Search Engine
Optimisation inform us that links to websites are graded as to importance by the
page rank of the linking site and the relevance of its content to the content on
the other site. Reciprocal links are of no importance especially with regard to
Google although they are not penalised. The higher the page rank of the linking
site the better. So we are constantly berated to seek out these high ranking
sites to get them to provide a backlink to our own sites. Often they also
intimate how you can go about this but when reading on you are never given a
definitive plan of for example how to convince the BBC to link to your own site.
I cannot give any ideas as to how to achieve this either. Even if you were
fortunate or lucky enough to get a backlink from a site with a PR of 8 would the
link be considered relevant? Only it seems if the content of the overall site
was related to the content of your own site? Google we re told looks carefully
at the content across all the pages of a site and not just the content on the
page where any link might be found. So I personally have stopped trying to
achieve such links.
Running a website with a page rank of 4, I am personally inundated with requests
from other webmasters to provide them with a reciprocal link. They always use
the same standard argument …..'you will appreciate the importance of links to
search engine positioning'….. . Where have these people been the last two years?
I always reply to them positively by refusing the reciprocal link but suggest
that I will place a link to them if they can give me a good reasoned argument as
to why I should. To date I have had not a single reply. These website developers
would have better fortune if they asked directly for a backlink without mention
of a useless reciprocal link. I am quite happy to accommodate someone who asks
nicely with a reasoned argument. So webmasters out there take note.
Returning to the idea of relevant backlinks. The greater majority of my own
backlinks are obtained from writing and publishing articles. Thes provide PR of
two to three and of course totally relevant content because the content of the
articles are related to the services that we provide. One problem with writing
and widely distributing articles is the penalty Google imposes on duplicate
content. Google will only take one of the sources and count it as a relevant
backlink whilst the majority of the other search engines will often count all
the places where the article has been published. Despite this article writing is
still the best and easiest way of getting good backlinks. It could, based on my
own experiences take anything up to one year before Google will recognise this
as a backlink.
About the Author
David Andrew Smith runs a successful contract cleaning company
http://www.wesparkle.co.uk
for both commercial and domestic customers in the UK. He has devoloped and
maintains the company's website.
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Article Published/Sorted/Amended on Scopulus 2009-08-11 02:26:34 in Computer Articles
