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Building & Structuring Inbound Links Part 5

12 Essential Strategies

By Stephen Mahaney

Originally Published: December 2004

Continued From: <<< 12 Essential Strategies for Building & Structuring Inbound Links Part 4

The "Problem" With Reciprocal Links

When all else fails, you may begin considering reciprocal links. We don't like this strategy all that much because search engines are continuously getting more sophisticated about detecting artificial linking patterns. Unfortunately, one of the most artificial linking patterns is reciprocal links, since natural link patterns are not typically reciprocal. If Yahoo lists a site in their directory, that site doesn't routinely link back to Yahoo. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, but, regardless, the engines are looking for pages that rank well due to popularity based on content - and they want to avoid sites where it appears the webmaster has spent a lot of time swapping links.

So, look at things from the search engine's point of view. If CNN runs an article about how great your company is and your company's site links back to the CNN article, does that look normal from the SEPOV? ...sure it does. Besides, CNN is an authoritative site that is white listed. They can do no wrong in the eyes of the engine and the link exchange looks like a natural link structure from the SEPOV. And, your site's page can expect a substantial boost in ranking.

On the other hand, if your site (with it's PR=4 or 5) is linked by Joe Blow's homepage with a PR=1, 2, or 3 and you link back to Joe's page, you shouldn't expect much, if any, boost in your rankings. In fact, it's entirely possible the two links are discounting each other based on an assumed link exchange arrangement that looks contrived because neither page is "authoritative" from the SEPOV.

Now, if you had, say 50 similar link arrangements, and the links were on-topic, and none of the pages involved had tripped the spam filters, then your page should get a reasonable boost in rankings. Still, you'd fair better simply by getting a single killer link from an authoritative site like CNN, Yahoo Directory, DMOZ, ZDNet, and so forth.

The point is, focus your efforts on collecting all the links you can from authoritative sites. Most importantly, be very careful about who you link back to because you might just be diminishing any benefit that would otherwise be derived from your incoming link. And, in terms of building page relevancy, there is rarely, if ever, any benefit to linking back to sites that are insignificant, untrusted, or suspected of behaving badly in terms of SE protocol. It can even hurt you.

Be Careful Who You Link Back To!

Gaining links from off-topic and perhaps not-trusted sites may not be your first choice, but, reportedly, it won't exactly hurt your rankings - they might even help a little. However, beware of getting yourself into a link exchange relationship with these sites and remember that you should not link back to them. Currently, the rule is that incoming links won't hurt you but outgoing links to sites that behave badly, can.

In other words, if you're left with only the option to swap links, be sure you do so carefully because linking to a site that has been penalized for policy infractions (i.e. search engine spam) can cause your site to be penalized as well. To help you avoid such a scenario, here are four cautionary steps you should take before linking to another site:

1. Search for their domain name on Google and Yahoo. If they're not listed on one or either of the engines, that's a bad sign. Linking to them could get your site penalized and possibly banned. Besides, even if they aren't a so-called "bad" site, linking to a site that the engines don't know about won't help you in the rankings anyway. However, if they are listed you can proceed to step two.
2. Determine who is already linking to them. The more incoming links they have, the better. And, the more important the sites that are linking to them, the better. Their PageRank score is one indicator of how important Google thinks the site is.
3. Beware of linking to sites or pages with a PR=0 (zero). This could mean that they've been penalized by Google. Granted, this test may not apply to very new sites, but if a site has been around for a while and lacks any PageRank, then you should be wary of linking to it.
4. Avoid linking to sites with controversial topics. Good examples of such sites would include gambling, adult, pharmacy, or loan/debt sites (unless you happen to be in one of these industries and the topic matches the content of your page)

Remember:

• You probably won't be hurt by who links to you.
• However, you can definitely be hurt by who you link to.

Continued: 12 Essential Strategies for Building & Structuring Inbound Links Part 6 >>>

Continued From: <<< 12 Essential Strategies for Building & Structuring Inbound Links Part 4

Part 1: <<< 12 Essential Strategies for Building & Structuring Inbound Links Part 1

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software.

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