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Reciprocal Vs Non-Reciprocal Backlinks – Are They Really Helpful?

Non-reciprocal links are one-way inbound links to your posts that originate from other sites, and they are considered as recommendations by other sites to their readers. These non-reciprocal backlinks get more values when they are coming from relevant and high-ranking websites. In addition, if the anchor text within the link is one of the keywords of your web page that it links to. The non-reciprocal links are also given much importance in the search engine optimization methods and search engines value them very highly.

Woman writing on book

Reciprocal links


Simply stated reciprocal links are based on an agreement by two sites (two ways) to link to each other. Reciprocal linking is often used by small sites as a way to increase Website traffic and link popularity. However, if you plan to enter such arrangements then it’s important to understand the implications and the realities.

Here’s the back story. In order to boost their site’s rankings with the sheer number of inbound links, many webmasters had agreed to reciprocal link exchanges. However, because many of these links were not relevant (see: Understanding Backlinks), they were disregarded in the last Google update. That meant that although the irrelevant inbound link was ignored, the outbound link still got counted and this diluted the relevancy score of many sites. The result was that many sites dropped off the Google map during the last Google update.

Matt Cutts on Nofollow, Links-Per-Page and the Value of Directories – Also note that there is a Google patent in the works that will deal with not only the popularity of the sites being linked to but will also assess how trustworthy a site is that you link to from your own site.

Reciprocal Links from the seobook.com glossary:
Quality reciprocal backlinks exchanges with each other is not a bad thing, but most reciprocal link provides are of low quality. If too many of your links are of low quality it may make it harder for your site to rank for relevant queries, and some search engines may look at the inbound link and outbound link ratios as well as link quality when determining how natural a site’s link profile is.
See also:

Indexing Timeline – Matt Cutts states that sites which have many low-quality inbound links and / or outbound links may struggle to rank or even get deeply indexed by Google.

Blogging for money

If you are starting a blog in India or anywhere for money then PR can be a major issue. Once your site has a higher PR then higher-paying writing opportunities become available to you. However, if you write for services like ReviewMe, Text Link Ads, Smorty, and PayPerPost then it’s important to understand that Google doesn’t like paid links, if you have them and if your site doesn’t indicate them with “nofollow” or, if you’re active on the Internet selling links on your site then your PR will suffer.

You might also like to read the latest Guest Blogging Tips


It’s Google’s search engine and they have every right to say that if you sell links, they might penalize you. Google is not telling site owners what to do with their sites. Google is telling site owners what to do if they are concerned about doing better in Google. If you don’t care about Google and pagerank then you will get penalized easily. But if you don’t want to be harmed in Google PR updates then don’t sell links and don’t link to sites that do.

Linking Strategy

(1) Links add valuable content to your site and we know that search engines (as well as people) love great content. The best linking strategy is to get a lot of non-reciprocal links (or one-way links), which are also relevant links to your site from high ranking and popular sites. When your site starts receiving so many high-quality non-reciprocal backlinks, then the search engines will select your websites and the web pages as having highly valuable content.

(2) If your web pages and the site get a lot of reciprocal (two-way links), especially if they are not related then the search engines will assume that these are solicited links, and search engines do not give much importance to such two-way or reciprocal links and may even penalize your site.

(3) Exchanging relevant, high-quality reciprocal links with other related sites is another method of driving targeted traffic to your site. Exercise caution when agreeing to reciprocal linking because, in the last Google update, reciprocal links were one of the targets of the search engine’s latest filter. Before you choose reciprocal links for your blog, consider your reader’s perspective first and whether those links providing value to them. If the sites are related to your site, then it could make sense because the links are organic and useful, but reciprocal linking between dozens or hundreds of sites, however, is unlikely to provide reader value.

(4) Search engines like Google

It uses link popularity as a method of ranking your site in their results. The more related sites that link to your site (especially high traffic sites relevant to your field), the higher on the page your site will appear when someone searches on “your” keywords.

Conclusion

In the end, I think now we have understood how reciprocal linking strategy can harm our blog or website badly. It is very crucial to understand these backlink strategies for every newbie blogger or website owner.

Instead of reciprocal links, try to connect with bloggers and ask for backlinks freshly. These valuable links will help you increase your SEO score.

If you guys found this article helpful, feel free to share this post on Facebook and Twitter. Make sure you leave your comments below on the reciprocal linking strategy.

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