seo
posted in search engine optimization  on 16 March 2007
by Andrew Lang 
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Reciprocal linking: the good, the bad and the ugly

Reciprocal linking is a big part of your SEO (search engine optimization) campaign for your website. Here we list some do's and don'ts to encourage quality, relevant websites to link to you. The following tips will add value to your links pages, which is what quality link partners are looking for.

Good : Put a link to your links directory in the permanent navigation at the top of your page. This will allow it to inherit greater PR. Greater PR means you will find higher quality link partners. Don't be ashamed of who you are linking to......or....should you be? Maybe you should.... :)

Bad/Ugly : A link to your links directory hidden away down at the foot of the page. Why hide it? You are endorsing quality websites, right? This just loses PR value on your links page. Quality link partners won't link to you, but you will collect a bunch of low quality sites - reinforcing the reticence to show the directory.....

Worse still, not linking to your links directory from your homepage.

Good : organize your links into categories. This keeps pages themed, as well as an opportunity to keep the number of links to a minimum per page. Good example:-

Example of categorising links

Bad/Ugly : A links page with hundreds of links (even if they're themed). Too many links and search engines are more likely to file under 'low quality'. We'd suggest no more than a maximum of 20 links per page - and they should all be accompanied with text descriptions to break up the links.

Good : Good on-page SEO for the links pages. Helps with PR ranking of the links page and also gives off-page SEO if linked to externally (as keywords are in anchor text of URL). Look at a good example:-

List-Jewellery-Making-Supplies.htm

You can see the category title is in the URL, page TITLE and is also an H2 tag. This is a themed page and is good for your link partners.

Bad/Ugly : Using words like 'links', 'exchange', 'reciprocal'. Avoid!! Search engines don't like reciprocation purely for SEO purposes and so these types of words leave 'evidence' that the links are to do with search engine optimization.

Good : Use words/phrases like 'resource directory' or 'list' instead of 'links'.

Bad/Ugly : A simple list of links without any descriptions. Again, it looks like low quality to a search engine spider.

Good : Add text descriptions to links (the descriptions aren't in the anchor text, they're just raw text below each anchor text).

Bad/Ugly : A links page that's 4 or 5 clicks away from the home page. It's next to useless and will be lucky to get a PageRank above 0.

Good : Put your links pages no more than TWO mouse clicks from the home-page. This will increase the PageRank of the links page.

Bad/Ugly : Accepting links from any website even if they're nothing to do with the content on your site (caveat: high PageRanked sites of 6+ are the exception). Accepting links without first browsing the link partner's site. Quantity over quality. All bad, all ugly, all of the time.

Good : Accept themed link partners (e.g. if you sell running shoes, an athletics club's website would be a good link partner). Browse prospective link partner sites first and see if they're 'quality'. All sites start with PR0, but with your own eyes you can see if a new site is well developed and there's good potential for it.

The Good tips above will get you more quality links because website owners who have a site that is PR3+ will not swap with anything resembling low quality - if there's not much in it for them, why should they bother?

Reciprocal linking is about getting what you're prepared to give. If you want quality links, give website owners an opportunity to have a quality link placed on your site - on a quality page with good PR rating.

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