Over the past two years, the importance of reciprocal links has declined considerably, where at one point, Matt Cutts, from Google stated at a Search Engine Strategies Convention, Google was going to just about ignore reciprocal links, unless there are some striking similarities between the sites and there is no question that the sites are extremely relevant.

As a search engine optimization firm, we have been asked the question by countless potential and actual clients why they can not go out and get those links. We always preach the link farm issue, which puts them in a “bad neighborhood” and the requirement for relevant links which can be found by humans. However, some people still just don’t get it. Reciprocal links are dead!

This morning, I read an article, distributed by Site Pro News that was directly on point with this SEO issue. The article was titled, “What’s Wrong with Reciprocal Linking, by Donald Nelson.

Mr. Nelson has some very poignant thoughts on the matter. Perhaps the most significant point he makes is that most of the request are automated today. Very rarely does an actual human being send a request. Now there is nothing wrong per se with an automated request. However, Mr. Nelson points out, “it leads to all kinds of abuses, and it prevents you from picking out the good links from the bad.” He also points out that most link requests are of extremely low quality. For example, take a look at the inbound links to the link request site, you will likely not find many. He further points out that the goal of many of those link requests are to generate

“money from Adsense and other advertising programs. In addition, driven by the need to acquire PageRank many webmasters went into a link gathering frenzy and sent requests to any and all sites whether they were related to their site or not. If a link is to be a resource to visitors of both sites, then the two sites should somehow be related and the sites should be of comparable quality. Most reciprocal link requests fail this test. “

His next point is very important if you desire more than just an inbound link for SEO purposes, but rather expect direct traffic from those links. Mr. Nelson correctly states, “Links are buried on pages where human eyes will never see them.” The problem is that in the past users would have a small site with one links page that might contain 30 or so links. Well, now in the world of dynamic web sites powered by databases and content management systems, web masters are setting up private directories.

That has all changed. People now build huge directories of hundreds of categories, stuffed with pages and pages of links. It is extremely unlikely that many visitors will drill down through all the pages and find your site in such a directory. These “huge directories of hundreds of categories are stuffed with pages and pages of links. It is extremely unlikely that many visitors will drill down through all the pages and find your site in such a directory.”

For more information on a better way to set up a linking strategy that will work for you, contact, Rock Coast Media today. In addition, if you would like to read the full article, check out Site Pro News.

# posted by SEOmanager @ 6:46 AM