Follow Up –Is reciprocal Linking Dead

By Tom Henricks
Posted Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Well it’s time for a follow up!
A few months back I wrote an article titled “Is reciprocal Linking Dead?” Still available at several locations 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.
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

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

About the Author
Tom is webmaster at website (www.lowestcostwebsites.com) and just finished the book "Guaranteed Website Success" available at that website