Reciprocal Links - Good or bad idea??

[bornstein75]

Hi Guys,

Are reciprocal links a good or bad idea?

I have found some sites that rank in the top 10 for my keywords offer reciprocal links, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to get my link on a page that has a high PR and top ranking.

Does Google penalize you for having reciprocal links, as it doesn't look natural?

[TheWealthSquad]

Google recognizes reciprocal links for what they are. I doubt you get penalized for them but they don't bring as much value as they used too.

[retta719]

If the site is relevant there's no harm in doing a reciprocal link, but I would avoid things that have pages and pages of links (ie otherdomain.com/links) as there's just no value there at all and people don't really use them or even look at them most of the time.

[Elizabeth Ashe]

I agree, you can still use them but it does not hold as much as they use to.

[AlexNewell]

There's is no penalty and no problem providing the page you are linking to is OK.

Better to find one way links tho'

:-)

[bornstein75]

Cool..thanks guys..this site i want a reciprocal link with has a PR of 1...

[Henrik Flensborg]

Cool..thanks guys..this site i want a reciprocal link with has a PR of 1...

I wouldn't worry too much about what TBPR is reported for the page you're getting your backlink from.

TBPR is not the real PR, only Google use PR in their ranking algorithms and it has a lesser impact on your ranking these days.

[lisahartwell]

Rather than a reciprocal link, I would always try and find a way to have a one-way link and provide value at the same time. Offer to guest post on someone's blog or provide something of worth. If someone asks you to link to them then ask them to guest post. A reciprocal link is OK, but a one-way link especially on a highly optimised blog posts is so much better from an SEO and a real visitor point of view.

On one of my blogs that receives regular link requests I tell people I will happily link to them if they write something, provide a photo for one of my features, or have a great product I can review. I also offer to write something for them. Strangely few people are willing to make the effort but that means I end up linking out only to quality stuff.

As an alternative, you could have 2 web properties on a topic so you can create a 3 way linking structure. For example, offer to link to them from a Squidoo page if they link to your blog (there are many combinations of linking you can offer - e.g. they could link to an Ezine article of yourse). Much more powerful from an SEO point of view.

Lisa