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Lesson #34

RECIPROCAL LINKS

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

In earlier lessons, we explained that the number and quality of in-bound links (links to your Website from other Websites) are crucial to your search engine rankings. In this lesson, we will discuss one of the methods used to obtain links to your Website - Reciprocal Linking. While Reciprocal Linking has been one of the most popular and effective ways to obtain links to your site, new risks are now associated with Reciprocal Linking. If used incorrectly, Reciprocal Linking can now do more harm than good. Thus, we will also introduce an exciting new service that was inspired by the research on this lesson.

WHY LINKS MATTER

It is fundamental that the value and profitability of any Website is determined by the traffic it receives. However exquisite in design or loaded with information a Website may be, it does not begin to function until it draws traffic. One of the key sources of traffic is links from other Websites. Links from other Websites also improve your ranking in search engine results. When your site has a good ranking in the search engines, much of your Internet traffic then comes directly from the search engines. Thus, links from other sites serve two functions: 1) bringing direct traffic to your site, and 2) bringing indirect (search engine) traffic to your site by improving your ranking in the search engines. Understandably, then, most successful webmasters concentrate much effort in obtaining links to their site from other sites across the Internet.

SOME TERMINOLOGY

For convenience in terminology, we will call the site containing a link to another site as the "source site." We will call the site to which the link is pointing the "target site."

We will also use the term "PageRank" in discussing the value of Websites and the value of specific pages of Websites. PageRankTM is Google's trademarked and patented way of calculating the importance of your site's pages based upon incoming links from other sites across the Internet.

Another term used to measure the value of your site to the search engines is "SERP Position," which stands for "Search Engine Results Page Position." This refers to the placement of your site in the list of results that a given search engine displays in response to a search. Your site's SERP Position in Google is based on its PageRank, but the two are not exactly the same.

Although a site's PageRank can exist independently of any particular search, a site's SERP Position can only exist relative to the keywords used in the search.

Let's say you have a Website on Nutrition. You have optimized your site for the keyword "nutrition." Say further that when someone searches Yahoo! for "nutrition" that your site is the 8th site to show up. Thus, your SERP Position for "nutrition" on Yahoo! is 8. Your SERP Position on Yahoo! for "Internet Marketing" may be 48,382,799 or greater - because you have not optimized your site for the search keyphrase "Internet Marketing. (Or, your site may not even show up at all in response to a search for "Internet Marketing" - in which case you would not even have a SERP Position for that keyphrase.) Thus, your SERP Position only exists with respect to a particular keyword or keyphrase. If the search terms vary, your SERP Position varies.

(More on "PageRank" and "SERP Position" in later lessons.)

FACTORS IN LINKING

When another site links to your site, there are a number of factors that are important.

As most Websites have more than one page, the specific page on the source site that contains the link to your site is an important factor. The link to your site could be from the home page of the source site, from a main page directly connected to the home page, or from a page buried obscurely deep within the site. Or, the link to your site may come from a "links page" - a page on the site with the sole purpose of housing reciprocal links to other sites. The specific page that links to your site is important for a couple of reasons. First, the home page of the source site will likely have a greater "PageRank" than an obscure page buried within the site. In the Google search engine algorithm, the "PageRank" of the pages linking to your site affect the PageRank of the target pages on your site. The higher the PageRank of the source site's linking page, the more PageRank value will be added to the target page of the target site.

Similarly, the specific page on your site that the link targets is also an important factor. If all of your in-bound links go to different pages of your site, the resulting PageRank value will be spread out over the pages rather than concentrated on specific pages. It is debatable, but many agree that it is better to have a high PageRank for your home page, than to have lower PageRank values spread out over your site's other pages. There are occasions where the "flow" of the link will be more effective if it is to one of your subordinate pages, but generally you want the links to your home page (or at least your main page for the subject of the link). In any event, the more control you have over the target of the links to your site, the better off you are.

The "Anchor Text" used in the link is also an important factor. "Anchor Text" is the actual text that appears and is highlighted on the source page and clicked on to activate the link to the target page. (It is the text between the AHREF tag and the closing anchor tag in the HMTL link.) Your site's SERP Position in most major search engines is increased with respect to a particular keyword when that keyword is included in the anchor text of a link to your site. That is, most search engines index your site under the keywords that are used in the anchor text of links to your site. If most of the links to your site use the same keyword or keyphrase, your site will be have a higher SERP Position for that keyword or keyphrase. Thus, in order to optimize your site for a particular keyword or keyphrase, you want control over the anchor text used in the in-bound links to your site.

Sometimes, of course, the link is from a banner or other graphic. In this case, the "anchor" is not text, but a graphic image which cannot be indexed by the search engines. Basic HTML code provides an "ALT" tag that you can use to add text to a graphic anchor. It is important to have this ALT tag added to the anchor of your in-bound graphic links and for the ALT tag to contain the proper keyword or keyphrase.

Another important factor is the physical placement of the link on the source page. Whether the link is within the content of the source site or displayed as an advertisement in the margin somewhere makes a big difference in the effectiveness of the link in driving direct traffic to your site.

Similarly, the relationship of the keywords of the link to the subject matter of the source site is crucial. The best links are those that naturally flow from the content of the source site. The most effective links are on subject with the theme of the source Website. Advertisements and lists of random links that have little relationship to the subject matter of the source site tend to be ignored by site visitors and are more and more falling into disfavor with the search engines.

Also, you want to know the number of other links (to other sites) from the source page containing your link. Links lose value as the number of links on a page increases. If the page of the source site containing the link also contains hundreds of other out-bound links, that link will provide very little value to your site.

You also want to know the PageRank and the SERP Position for your keywords of the source site. The higher the quality of the source site, the greater the value of the link to your site.

Paying attention to these and other similar factors will make your link building efforts more effective.

CONTROL IS KEY

As you can derive from the above discussion, the more control you have over the various factors involved in your in-bound links, the more you will be able to optimize your site. The best way to obtain control is through communication with the webmasters providing your in-bound links. You should request as much input as possible into the creation of the in-bound links to your site. When a Reciprocal Linking service is used, you should look for those services that provide the most control over the linking process.

BUILDING LINKS

Now that you know the important factors, you can begin to build links to your site in earnest. There are numerous ways to build links, some of which we have already discussed in this course and some of which we will address in later lessons. In this lesson, however, we will focus on Reciprocal Linking. Reciprocal Linking is one of the most popular and, until recently, one of the most effective ways to build links to your site. (As we will discuss below, there are now serious penalties which may result from careless Reciprocal Linking.) There are two main ways to approach Reciprocal Linking: "do it yourself" and using Reciprocal Linking services.

DO IT YOURSELF

The most obvious way to begin to build links to your site is to approach the webmasters of complimentary Websites and ask them to exchange links with you. Theoretically, when two sites exchange links, they both receive something of value. The value exchange may be lop-sided, though, if one site has a much higher PageRank than the other. In order to get a highly ranked site to exchange links with you, you may have to sweeten the deal somewhat by offering other value in addition to your link back. Reciprocal linking works best, therefore, when you find sites of similar PageRank and SERP Position to your own.

This approach requires you to seek out the complimentary sites and their webmasters and to negotiate the reciprocal link. The best way to do this, of course, is to search for your keywords on the search engines and find sites with similar ranking to yours. On these sites, you look for contact links to propose the reciprocal link arrangement. This process can be very time consuming, but provides more control than relying upon linking services. Linking services, however, speed up the process considerably.

RECIPROCAL LINKING SERVICES

Similar to the evolution of Affiliate Programs (as discussed in Lesson 6), Reciprocal Linking Services have arisen to streamline and automate the reciprocal linking arrangements.

Link Exchange services come in many varieties and prices. Prices for use of link exchange services range from free to $610. LinkExchanged, at the time of this writing, cost $9.95 per month. LinksManager cost $19.95 per month. GoTop has a $29.95 one-time fee. Linkalizer, LinkMarket, LinksPartners, and Value-Exchange.Sitesell are free (for basic services).

The services offered vary as well. Most of the services, unfortunately, facilitate the maintenance of a "links page" which contains little more than a list of links to the sites which in turn provide a link to you on their links page. This worked great for a while, but now can create serious problems.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A'CHANGING

We've said it before and we'll say it again here - the only thing constant about the Internet is that it is constantly changing.

While many webmasters have had much success with the reciprocal linking services over the last few years, the search engines have now caught on to the game. Google, in particular, is believed by many to have developed an algorithm to detect and penalize reciprocal linking. Many sites, which had obtained good PageRanks and SERP Positions due to reciprocal linking, recently suffered a marked drop in both.

As discussed in Lesson 10, the search engines are very motivated to keep their results useful to the search engine visitors. The search engines desire to promote the free flow of useful information. Links have been valued by the search engines because links provide choices that help Internet users find the information they seek. However, when links are clustered and random - not related to any particular flow of subject matter - those links do not add value to the users' experience in the eyes of the search engines. Links presented in this fashion do not effectively help users to find particular information. Reciprocal link pages, usually being random, lengthy lists of unrelated links, are now disfavored by the search engines. What used to help, now hurts!

It is easy for the search engines to detect reciprocal linking. They can simply look for large numbers of out-bound links on the same page. They then look at the target sites to see if the majority of them contain links back to the source site. When these reciprocal links pages are detected, the site is penalized.

None of the currently popular Reciprocal Linking services that I could find seem to have adequately adjusted to these new rules. These services were founded on the now defective traditional model and appear too entrenched in that model to appropriately respond to the new search engine environment in a timely manner.

A NEW SERVICE FOR THE NEW RULES

In researching this lesson, I became keenly aware that a new linking service based on a new model is desperately needed now. So much so, that I approached my company to develop one. The result is ProfitPropulsion.com's MILES link exchange service. "MILES" is an acronym for "Multi-Party Indirect Link Exchange Service." With MILES you do not directly exchange reciprocal links with other sites. Rather, a sophisticated, intelligent system allows each site to carefully create links to complimentary sites, preserving the flow of subject matter; which links are rewarded indirectly by links from other sites to which your site is complimentary. The rules of linking with MILES ensure that links will be useful and valuable - the kind favored by the search engines.

Because links are not directly exchanged, MILES links will not be detected as reciprocal links by the search engines . Instead of the straightforward, unsophisticated exchange of links between sites, links are balanced from a pool of sites. Site A may link to Site B. Site B may link to Site C. Site C may link to Site D. Site D, in turn, may link to Site A or B. Site E may link to Site A, B, or C, and so on. Thus each participating site ultimately receives an in-bound link for each out-bound link - just not from the same site to which it links.

The objective is not to fool the search engines, but to comply with their wishes. Reciprocal links are usually obligatory and thus not driven by the free flow of information. MILES links are flexible and can be carefully chosen to promote the free flow of information. For example, if you have a site whose primary focus is to sell nutritional supplements, you and your visitors would be better served by a link to a site whose primary focus is to provide health information, than to another site just like yours selling the same nutritional supplements. That health related site is more complimentary to your site. That site, in turn, would be better served to link to another information site that covers information not covered on their site, than they would be to link back to your site. Down the line of links, the focus may shift to health related products and one of those sites can create a complimentary link back to your site. Greater value will ensue to both the source sites and the target sites from this type of complimentary subject matter linking. Internet users have a more valuable experience as they are moved through an open system of complimentary information when they follow these links.

A traditional reciprocal link represents a closed loop to the Internet user. On Site A the user links to Site B and on Site B the link is back to Site A. Following the links contributed by the traditional service, the user is immediately back where she started. MILES linking creates an open system of links flowing across the entire pool of participating sites. Search engines and Internet users favor open systems over closed loops.

The popular linking services may eventually adjust to the new search engine rules. In the meantime, MILES provides an alternative which eliminates the new risks associated with reciprocal linking.

You can obtain more information and sign up for the MILES service at ProfitPropulsion.com

CONCLUSION

The number and quality of in-bound links are crucial to the effectiveness of your Website. While there are many ways to obtain links to your site, this lesson has focused on only one of those methods, Reciprocal Linking. There are many factors that you should keep in mind while building links to your site. Control over these factors is important to the optimization of your site for your particular keywords or keyphrase. You can take a "do-it-yourself" approach to building links to your site or you can use a linking services. The search engines are now believed to penalize reciprocal linking, however, so the danger of using most of these services now outweighs the benefits. MILES is a new service that has been created to avoid the new search engine penalties and to create links that are more useful for everyone. Until the existing link exchange services revise their methods in light of the new rules, MILES is the only safe service to use. You can learn more about MILES at http://profitpropulsion.com.

WHAT'S COMING NEXT

Stay tuned to upcoming lessons in the Internet Income Course for detailed discussions of timely and important topics in Internet Marketing.

by George Little
Copyright (year) Panhandle On-Line, Inc.
License granted to Carson Services, Inc. for distribution to SFI affiliates. No part of this work may be republished, redistributed, or sold without written permission of the author.

For more information on the Internet Income Course and other works and courses by George Little, see www.profitpropulsion.com.

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