Most webmasters are intimately familiar with the process of trading links with other websites.  Chances are, if you own or administer a site, you get requests to exchange links many times each week.  While annoying and usually automated, those requests represent one of the oldest methods of SEO there is:  Reciprocal linking.

Conventional wisdom on the subject says that getting a link on a site and linking back to them directly isn’t the best way to go about getting higher search engine rankings since you’re giving up authority to get some back.  Although this is true in many cases, it’s not an absolute rule.  As a matter of fact, some of the best possible links that many eCommerce sites can hope to get are by trading with other related sites in the same or similar industries.

 When doing reciprocal linking, the proof of quality really is in the pagerank (or your preferred value metric):  You’ll notice that sites with a focused link page that only links out to other quality sites relevant to their business will almost always have a good amount of PR, even on the link page itself, which means that an exchange would be valuable to pursue.  Conversely, sites that have full link directories about every topic and will link to anyone who links back are not worth the time it takes for the exchange and are best to pass up.  In those cases, you’ll see that their link directory doesn’t have much, if any, pagerank, and most of it will be on the directory index page, with the inner pages having almost zero authority and sometimes they won’t even be cached.  So, the rule with reciprocal exchanges is simply to be very selective and choose only the best sites to exchange with.

Beyond the value issue, there’s also the question of whether you want to actively engage in proposing link exchanges to other webmasters.  There are plenty of reasons to keep this tactic in reserve, including the fact that it’s an enormously time-consuming process, especially if done correctly.  Despite the time it takes, it’s still a very cost-effective option for getting good links to your site.  There are just a few rules to make sure are followed.  The cardinal rule goes something like “don’t automate” and while it sounds less than efficient, there’s pretty much nothing more annoying than automated emails, period (except maybe unwelcome audio on websites…).  Additionally: 

• Be as polite as possible, compliment the webmaster’s site and tell them what you like about it. 
• Make sure to offer something in return for linking to your site so that they know that you’re ready to make a mutually beneficial trade and aren’t simply trying to hijack their authority for yourself.

The most common exchange offer is, of course, a reciprocal link, but in certain cases something else might be more enticing to the webmaster…  Make sure to cruise their site and see if you can come up with something like that before sending out the requests.

In the end, the success rate of sending out emails requesting link trades is pretty low, even under the best of circumstances.  However, it’s one of the best ways to get high quality, related sites to link to you without indulging in paid linking.

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You may have tried link building campaigns in the past and been disappointed in the results. Perhaps you got barely a blip in the major search engines or you saw your rank rise only to fall a few months later. Whatever the reasons for your disappointment, it’s a good bet that the main reason you were disappointed in the results is that whatever link building tactics you used or paid for lacked two important qualities: balance and consistency.

The Importance of Balance in Link Building

Some people advocate the importance of content-rich websites, others focus on blogs and still others will insist that directories are the most important link building campaign features. The truth is never as simple as some people try to make it. It can seem like blogs are the place to link one month, and then be out of fashion just a few months later, with forums replacing them as the Holy Grail for link building.

The truth is, all of the many places you can link to and from (with the exception of unsavory linking sites that are tantamount to spam) are important to provide you a balance of coverage in your link building campaigns. Search engines are constantly changing, growing and evolving. They become more complex, develop new algorithms and morph so that you can’t ever keep up with how they are weighing the relative importance of any one kind of link, so you shouldn’t even try.

The solution is to balance your link building strategies for the greatest possible coverage over a multitude of formats. If you do this, you’ll find that you are always hitting on multiple cylinders. Although you might not be getting great results from every single link strategy, you’ll be getting pretty good ranking from several of them. It’s like playing a good point spread – coverage is key.

A good link building campaign with optimal coverage will include all of these:
• Directories with real editors. Well-known directories that are always updating and actually review the links are a hot destination for many industries.
• Forums. Links to your site from various forums provide dynamic attention for you – forums are the equivalent of the water cooler – the site where the latest and most interesting topics come up. Be present at the virtual water cooler and you’ll be talked about – and linked to.
• Article directories. Submit relevant, informative articles to directories to easily multiply your links. These article directories are used by others to provide content for everything from newsletters to special reports – if your content is good, you’ll quickly become a recognized expert.
• Reciprocal links. Provide links to sites that compliment what you are offering and ask that they link to you. Similar sites that aren’t direct competitors are powerful link partners.
• Contextual links in blogs and reviews. Another instance of the power of the people – reviewers drive people to sites because they are recognized as experts, so try and get reviewed and be sure a link to your site is included. Some people won’t even know they need you until they read a great blog about you –and then they will hot-foot it to your site for more information.

If you use a good mix of link building techniques, you’ll be balancing your exposure over all of the many kinds of linking that the major search engines use so that you’re always noticed without the risk of falling down in the ranks because one particular link strategy is out of favor.

Why Consistency is Key

Many individuals start out in overdrive when they start a linking campaign. They submit to dozens of industry directories, pack their website and article directories with great content, get noticed on blogs and in reviews, set up links on complimentary sites and enjoy the fruits of their labor – top rankings.

Then something happens; they find that they just don’t have the time to continue writing articles, they stop visiting blogs because they are overwhelmed with new customers….and they stop building links or slow down considerably. Unfortunately, they discover that they are now dropping in the search engine rankings and they can’t understand it. After all, nothing’s changed, right?

Actually, that’s precisely the point – nothing is changing. If you stop actively creating links and building a following, you will fall in the rankings because your competitors are actively building links, adding content and quietly passing you in popularity. The search engines are dynamic, so you can’t afford not being dynamic yourself – you have to consistently build on what you started in order to stay ahead of the pack. It’s a long-term commitment that you have to make if you don’t want to lose in the long run.

The perfect link building campaign is a combination of balance and consistency. If you continue to spread your links out over many venues and keep the content and information flowing every month, you’ll be successful in building a valuable network of links that will send you to the top of the pages.

[tags] link building, link popularity, directories, article marketing, contextual links, forums [/tags]

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There seems to be a lot of negativity surrounding reciprocal linking by SEO "gurus" and amateurs alike, most notably in the various internet forums. Reciprocal links, according to the naysayers, are virtually worthless because they supposedly do not help your search rankings or pass Google PageRanks to your site.

Reciprocal linking is a perfectly natural and legitimate traffic-building technique that predates the search engines themselves.  From years of internet marketing experience, reciprocal links are an invaluable source of highly targeted direct traffic. Some of our sites are receiving hundreds of visitors a month through our link partners.

The keyword here is relevant. You’ll get clicks to your site only if your link is displayed prominently on your partners’ sites and that they are related to yours in some way. By the same token, you must be prepared to trade links with your partners in good faith, which includes devoting premium space to your link partners and limiting the number of outbound links on your site.

Here are some important points to keep in mind when swapping links with another site:

• Is the site in question relevant to yours in some way? Traffic is one thing, but high-quality, targeted traffic traffic is another. While you can get clicks by swapping links with an unrelated site, you can get more relevant traffic at higher click-through rates from sites are related to yours. 
• Is the site complementary to yours, or is it a direct competitor? It’s not always true that linking to a direct competitor will be detrimental to your business. No two sites are exactly identical. There must be something different that the other site offers that yours doesn’t. Ask yourself whether or not the benefits from exchanging links with a competitor will outweigh the potential harms. 
• Get an idea of your potential link partner’s traffic before trading links with them. Ideally, you’d want to trade links with sites that have comparable or higher traffic than yours. Don’t trade links with low-traffic sites as you could gain more by exchanging links with high-traffic ones. One exception to this rule is if the site under consideration is new and looks promising, in which case, the immediate liability in linking to the site is outweighed by the potential future benefits.  You could look at various analytical parameters, such as PageRank, Alexa ranking, link popularity, search ranking, to gauge a potential linking partner’s traffic. But none of these measurements are definitive, so there is an art to deciding whether or not a site is worth swapping links with.
• Where will your link appear on your partner’s site? Will your link appear in a highly visible spot or in the footer? Footer links will not get you many direct clicks and may not even help you in the search engine rankings. 
• How many outbound links does your potential linking partner have? The fewer the number of competing links, the greater the chance that your link will be clicked on. 
• Will your link be placed on only a single page or site-wide on your partner’s site? Site-wide links provide the greatest exposure as visitors may exit from any page on your partner’s site to your site. If your link partner does not do site-wides for any reason, make sure they link to your site from a prominent place on their home page. Links from "Links" or "Resources" pages will not get you much traffic.
• Make sure that your anchor text (link title) is descriptive and keyword-rich. Descriptive, keyword-rich link titles not only will not only get more people to click on your site, but also will help more in the search engine rankings — to the extent that reciprocal links provide any SEO benefits at all. But we’re not concerned about search engines, are we? Bear in mind that your main focus is the people who visit your partner’s site, not the search engine bots.

Special thanks to Oudam Em of http://www.unlimitedtraffic.net/ who provided much of the content in this article.

[tags] reciprocal links, anchor text, link building, site wide links, link partner [/tags]

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