"we love your website, you add our link and we will link to you" kind of thing or "you must link from your homepage" yeah, of course we will.. for a fee
It surprises me that so many people keep hammering the reciprocal links.
My understanding, and happy to be corrected by any SEO gurus is that web links are the currency of authority in the eyes of the search engines.
In otherwords, if website abc.com has great content, people will feel the urge to talk about it, recommend it and link to it, so this site then becomes an authoritive site, is given a nice bit of Google Pagerank, and is rewarded by a higher placement in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
If site xyz.com says hello abc.com, I'll link to you if you link to me, then Mr Google says your not the respected authority we thought you were, so we won't reward you with better placings in the search results.
Ok, very over simplified, and idealistic maybe, and I don't doubt for a minute that reciproical links can be displayed without being punished, as long as you have natural and oneway links to back them up, but a lot of people do seem to just go for reciprocal links.
In my mind, this isn't a well forumulated or balanced SEO plan. I would aim for good content to generate natural links (link bait), sign up with a few directories or other paid links, do some blogging, and reply to blogs (with do follow links), and maybe some article marketing.
Googles guidelines say this about links:
...some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:
- Links intended to manipulate PageRank
- Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
- Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
- Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
So maybe have a think when embarking on your linking campaigns!
Be interested to hear anyone elses opinions or experiences
