Is Reciprocal backlinking dead?

Just a quick post about reciprocal backlinking.

I’ve had a few questions about this over the past few months & when I mention to clients that they should look into reciprocal backlinking opportunities with clients & customers for example, I often get the question “Isn’t reciprocal backlinking dead?”

Simple answer is NO, it’s isn’t.

1 way backlinks are, on the whole, better than 2 way backlinks – but this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t bother having any reciprocal backlinks at all.

What I always do (and I suspect most other SEO Consultants do the same) whenever I’m faced with a scenario where there is no known exact answer (which is just about every scenario in SEO!) is I think about what Google would see as natural, and if I think Google would expect a certain thing naturally, then that certain thing is likely to be positive in some degree as long as it’s not overdone (anything at all overdone doesn’t look natural).

Google would expect to see some topic relevant reciprocal backlinks, suppliers, clients, colleagues etc – so although they may not attribute quite as much weight to these 2 way backlinks as they would to the same backlinks if they were 1 way, they’re still going to do some good – and they’re certainly not going to do any harm.

If you overdo reciprocal backlinks – to the point that a large percentage of your backlinks are 2 way – then I would expect this to cause some kind of a negative impact on your overall link popularity, even if it’s just that Google decide to effectively ignore your 2way backlinks.

They do this to weed out link farm type schemes from having any positive impact. Spammy sites at one point, were doing quite well from building large amounts of 2 way backlinks, and it was a pretty easy thing to do – so it created a bit of a loophole to allow the crap to rise to the top, Google don’t like the crap to rise, they like the cream to rise to the top & the crap to fall to the floor, that’s why they’re the leading search engine  as they do this so effectively,  so they continually tweak their systems to enable them to weed out any loopholes which could allow the crap to rise.

So – reciprocal linking isn’t dead, just don’t overdo it, act on any opportunity to gain good niche relevant 2 way backlinks, but don’t go mad with it.

“Simples” as the merecat says!

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Filed under: SEO General

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