Analyzing One-Way vs. Reciprocal Links

[thejenn]

Authored by: Stoney deGeyter

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/degeyter/006390.html

A Snippet:

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.

[aramyus]

Stoney

There is a rather general consensus that reciprocal links are hardly not devalued versus non reciprocal, in particular if the 2 sites are related.

But when it comes to themed links or quality of links there does not seem to be much difference between clean and dirty links

I wish you were right and that SE were capable of devaluating 'dirty links'.

But all recent success stories I have seen on getting fast SE traffic involve at least gray hat linking practices (if not the darkest black)...

Did you observe the same on your side ?

Of course, I do not say that white hat is dead. It obviously brings more long term value.

Remy

[St0n3y]

I'm not sure what you mean by "dirty links". If you mean on-topic vs. off-topic links, there is a huge difference in value between the two, with on-topic links of being much greater value. This may not be in effect as much as the search engines would like, but you bet they are working on ways to distinguish the two even more.

In fact, many go far beyond my synopsis and believe that ANY reciprocal link is worthless. I don't subscribe to that for a number of reasons that I don't need to lay out here, but to play that side of the coin for a moment, if the search engines feel that reciprocal links are bad, you better believe they feel even more strongly about off-topic links.

With any SEO or linking program there is sure to be substantial cracks which can be slipped through, at least in the short term. As an SEO we try to provide the long-term benefits, which can be done without violating search engine guidelines. Of course many would argue that any form of link exchanging is a gray hat area. I don't agree, but it only matters what the search engines think.

[marvinniven]

Interesting article. The conclusion seems a bit self serving though:

"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."

There are some manipulations that should be penalised as they are flooding the internet with sp@m. Also, manipulation (defined as "exerting shrewd or devious influence especially for one's own advantage") can lead to the search engines results being ordered in the interests of those manipulating rather than the searchers it is intended for.

[aramyus]

I spend quite a bit of time to find 'clean' link exchanges

I normally apply the following criteria:
- site related to mine
- themed link page with relevant <title>, sites grouped by subjects, some description for each web site, sometimes additional text
- maximum 30 links per page
- page cached by Google in the last 30 days
- Most of these pages have some page rank (often PR2 to PR5)

I offer a similar link in return

These pages are hard to find, but they exists.


I consider these to be 'legitimate' link exchanges and It is unlikely that they are penalized either today or in the future.


In contrast, the majority of webmasters do not seem to be that attentive.


They make link exchanges with totally unrelated sites, on link pages having sometimes 100 links or more, sites not grouped (pharmacy, home business, cars and vacations sites are on the same page), hardly no text beside the links... I call these 'dirty links' and I stay away from them.

By far, this practice is not limited to sp.mmy sites. I have seen sites with good content do it too.

My discussions with several webmasters suggest that, in reality, SE make little difference between themed (clean) and not-themed links (dirty). They base this assumption on their own observations, and since many of them are successful, I would tend to trust them.

So, not only reciprocal links bring little if any depreciation, but even un-themed links seem to have little penalty…

PS: I do not really intend to change my link exchange practice

[St0n3y]

Interesting article. The conclusion seems a bit self serving though:

"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."

My point here is that search engines should look for ways to improve relevance of results instead of looking for ways to penalize sites that manipulate the system to their advantage. If my site is 100% relevant to query but I got there though "manipulation", how are the search results harmed?

I spend quite a bit of time to find 'clean' link exchanges

I normally apply the following criteria:
- site related to mine
- themed link page with relevant <title>, sites grouped by subjects, some description for each web site, sometimes additional text
- maximum 30 links per page
- page cached by Google in the last 30 days
- Most of these pages have some page rank (often PR2 to PR5)

Many in the industry would now consider those to be "dirty" links. While we still do reciprcal linking, we moved away from the concept of link pages in favor of more relevant links from strong content pages. My personal view is that link pages will be, if not already are, highly devalued in a search engine's analysis.