Follow Up- is reciprocal Linking dead?

By Tom Henricks
Posted Saturday, September 4, 2004

Well it’s time for a follow up!

A few months back I wrote an article titled “Is reciprocal Linking Dead?” This article can be viewed at several resources including (http://www.ideamarketers.com/library/article.cfm?articleid=23275)

At that time I was determined that I could produce a competitive website with solid content and search engine friendly construction. I had decided that this issue of crazy and excessive reciprocal linking had gone out of control. It’s was my belief then and remains my belief now that this cannot remain a valid method for the search engines to judge a website’s value.

I also stated that I would not become a willing participant in this madness. Well some time has passed and I’m afraid I must back-pedal a little bit.

I still believe that the value of linking will be looked at carefully by big brother Google. You don’t need to look very far on the net to see that the issue is far from stable. Many website owners are complaining that Google is not acknowledging their quality links. I can personally confirm that fact. Many websites, upon checking are showing links in the thousands and even hundreds of thousands. Unfortunately though, google obviously doesn’t have a procedure to recognize all linking structures. This is understandable. Website owners are using a wide variety of paths and methods to link to their partners. Many of these links will not get picked up by the search engine. These links get buried in exotic site mapping structures and huge databases under various categories. It is my own observation that a true quality link should be directly linked to your partner’s homepage and should contain at least one of your keywords. This is assuming you wish to benefit from that website’s page rank. I think this is the primary objective of most linking today. The thought that we may improve our traffic has become secondary. If those requirements are met and your partner has a good page rank, I believe that you will benefit in google’s ranking system. Anything that strays from those two points might diminish the benefits of the link for page ranking purposes.I must say that my ego was far bigger than my power and I have found it essential to go link hunting. You just won’t get any page rank without some GOOD QUALITY, RELEVANT links. I tried unsuccessfully. Other factors contribute to page rank also but in our competitive market, we just can’t afford to give ground on any one factor.
So the bottom line is -I am link searching.
Stay Tuned _ It's not over yet!

Where can you get links. A variety of places that I will briefly express my own opinion regarding their value.

Reciprocal Linking – relatively easy to become a member and easy to use system. I have found limited response from requests.

Links4Trade–disappointing for a couple of reasons –any thoughts of page rank help should be forgotten – your partners don’t even link to you from their own website so you won’t benefit from their page rank. The intended benefit is increased traffic. After placing some 150 requests and a month’s time – approximately 20 responses. Roughly 25 percent of members haven’t even provided valid email addresses. Many fly by nighters coming and going

LinkPartners .com – I like it -good response and quality websites, procedures in place for valid participation

Zeus Cyber-Robotics – probably the most effective – a bit expensive – setup a bit time and resource intensive – after setup it searches the net within your parameters and presents you with all the prospects – There is no doubt in my mind that this will return the greatest number of targeted link prospects . I am reading that there seems to be a bad relationship issue between google and Zeus so I would recommend some research and sound decision making before you go that route.

Arelis (http://www.arelis.co.uk/)

This is my choice for linking resources. It’s easy to use and manages the whole program for you. It will search for appropriate links based on your direction. Search on keywords or a competitor’s site. It stores the link, information about the site for your link and searches out the email address for you. It will present this to you to email the site owner using their forms if you wish, and places the link on a webpage that is a duplicate of your website pages. It then adds the links in a format that pleases your needs all nice and organized. It remembers which sites you have confirmed. It will even easily check all your partners sites to see who is maintaining their link to you. No stone is left unturned. It does all this without performing functions that irritate the search engines. I can’t imagine anything else I require in a linking program.

In summary, at the moment I must give in to the fact that the power of someone else’s website is required to allow my own website to be recognized.

Stay Tuned – It’s not over yet.

Tom Henricks

News and Tips

POINTS TO PONDER

I currently have 5 separate websites that are little more than a month old and all have a Google page rank of 3. The ONLY links to these sites are my own sites. Do you think there is more than just linking involved in Google page rank? I know it!!!

Want to check them Click 1 2 3 4 5

Tips On Linking

Obviously we will all be engaged in the sport of "linking" for some time to come. A few pointers to keep in mind.

When you request a link from another website - Tell them you would like the link from specific text that contains one or two of your keywords or very important words describing your website. Do that immediately on initial arrangement. It is very difficult to change that at a later date. I can personally attest to that.

Try to select link partners that have their links page accessible directly and clearly from their homepage. If that link page originates from any other source, it's value for sharing page rank is very questionable. Although increased website traffic may be realized, let's face the truth. We are all looking to improve our own page rank from our links.

If links are buried in a maze of page connections and directories, your link may never even be discovered by big brother (google) This appears to be the case on a regular basis according to complaints on several forums.

The most obvious and talked about point - the link should be from a site that contains relevant information to your website.

Personal practice - It is great to get linked to a website with "rank". I am a happy camper when that happens and my rank is improving steadily. You will no doubt get to the point where others are asking you for links. Some may have no page rank and you may get into a rut where you only look for their page rank to decide whether you will link to them. I like to look at their website. If it has potential I will link to them regardless of rank. If I think there are some blatant weaknesses I will mention them. Remember, they could improve enough to help you down the road.

Well I think we have beat this enough for this issue. each and every issue of this letter I will try to talk on things like this on a level that we all can work with and hopefully get some little thing that makes a difference.

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