Things You Should Know About Reciprocating Links

All webmasters have something in common. The desire to see their site getting visitors. And one of the best ways to achieve that is to have their site on the first page of the big search engines, especially Google.

So, you think of all the ways at your disposal in order to accomplish your goal. And top of the pops is inevitably inbound links. Without other websites linking to yours, giving you their ‘vote of approval’ you may stand virtually no chance of reaching the coveted top page of Google. That is unless you have a site which is very unique, with unique search terms where there is little competition from other sites.

For most of us though, we need links. And, human nature being what it is, we look for the quickest and easiest ways to get them. This is where reciprocal links might jump to mind. Another webmaster links to your site, you link to his, and before long you’ve got hundreds of links. The question is though, how valuable are those links?

One thing Google is not, and that is stupid. They pick up on those sites which are obviously swapping links with one another. Google themselves say “..Excessive link exchanges, could ‘negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.’ ” If done sparingly you are probably doing yourself no harm at all, but done on a mass scale it could impact badly on your site.

Concentrate on getting inbound links only. This can be done in a number of ways. You can take the initiative, writing to other sites which are similar (relevant) to yours, asking for a link back. It does not always work, since many will say “yes” but only in return for a link by you to theirs. Some though will probably be happy to.

Use social networking and other social-type sites to get the word out about your site. These include Digg, Facebook, and Stumbleupon for example.

The most effective way to get others to link to you is to have interesting, original, unique content. If it is appealing, then your site will get found, and people will be willing to quote it as a valuable resource for others.

Finally, do not always think that the only worthwhile inbound links are “Dofollow.” While it is true that from a Page Rank perspective Google is only concerned with link juice being passed via “Dofollow” links, there are sufficient reasons to still use “Nofollow” links, such as those found on Yahoo Answers.

By answering a question there you are a) helping another member to find a solution to his problem, b) potentially driving traffic to your own site. And who knows how valuable that traffic could turn out to be?

More information can be found at the New News Site