By Stoney deGeyter
Analyzing One-Way Vs. Reciprocal Links
Link building has become a cornerstone of SEO/SEM
services so many are interested in knowing what makes a good link,
what they should strive for, etc. that will provide the biggest
impact on their site optimization.
I was recently asked the following:
"These days, I've heard alot about one-way links being better
than reciprocal and worth more in respect to pr rankings. If possible,
could you please offer me some insight on reciprocal vs. one way
links."
Here was my response:
"We certainly believe that one-way links are better than reciprocal
links, but not to the extent that many others assume. You hear a
lot of talk about reciprocal links being dead and for a while we
believed this is the direction the search engines were going, but
the more research we did the more we believe this NOT the case.
"The factors that we look at as being the most important are
link relevance and quality. If these issues are in line then it’s
not going to matter if it's a one-way link or a reciprocal link...
just a valuable link."
Search engines certainly want to get a handle on link manipulation
but there are many more effective ways of doing so. In fact, many
believe the most recent Google algorithm change is the implementation
of how links are viewed, and it has nothing to do with one-way vs.
reciprocal links.
When analyzing links, determining if a link is reciprocated is
not an entirely effective way to gage the users intent. Many sites
link back and forth to each other simply because it makes good business
sense to do so. If all reciprocal links are devalued search engines
are essentially shutting out legitimate links simply by assuming
that the intent was ill-formed.
Yes, a large portion of reciprocal links are simply SEOs and site
owners manipulating the system, but that in itself isn't necessarily
bad. After all, Google claims to have spidered over 8 billion pages.
I'm sure its the grand link building campaigns and site cross-linking
that has allowed them to find a few of those billion. The bottom
line is that just because a link is reciprocated does not mean that
it's an illegitimate relationship.
Search engines can determine link quality by a number of other
measures:
- Comparing themes of the link source and link destination pages
- Placement of links on the page (i.e. is it in body content,
ad section, navigation area, etc.)
- Relatedness of the two linked sites (are they in compatible
industries?)
These three measures alone will provide a far greater measure of
the quality of a link than looking at whether a link is reciprocated
or not.
In regards to links, and SEO in general, I don't believe it makes
much sense for search engines to look for ways to penalize those
who are manipulating the system to their advantage, but rather to
make sure that those manipulations work to provide higher-quality
search results.
Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing, a Reno
SEO firm providing search engine optimization and marketing
services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at Truckee
Meadows Community College, as well as a moderator in the Small Business
Ideas Forum. He also contributes daily to the (EMP)
E-Marketing Performance search engine marketing blog.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stoney_DeGeyter
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