Thread: Reciprocal Linking

I've heard a rumor that "State Pages" and "Link to Me" forms are no longer advisable in trying to build your search engine ranking.

I did some research after hearing this. According to Matt Cutts of Google, and I'll just quote here from his blog...

"The sites that fit 'no pages in Bigdaddy' criteria were sites where our algorithms had very low trust in the inlinks or outlinks of that site. Examples that might cause that include excessive reciprocal links, linking to spammy neighborhoods on the web, or link buying/selling. The Bigdaddy update is independent of our supplemental results, so when Bigadaddy didn't select pages from a site, that would expose more supplemental results for a site."

However, after reading more of his blog, I just became very confused and didn't see any definitive information to say that reciprocal linking is bad.

Any thoughts?

The website is mattcutts.com [forward slash] blog [forward slash] indexing-timeline

(I seriously need to make the requisite 15 posts so I can hyperlink!)

Reciprocal linking is not bad and is still a viable method of obtaining links.

However, what has dramatically changed is Google's infrastructure and what they consider to be a worthy page in their index. For example, if you have a lot of outbound links that are not directly related to the theme of that page (and even the general theme of your web site) Google may decide that page does not belong in their index.

Some traditional links pages that are not strictly themed have also been dumped from the Google index (i.e. a single link page with links to web sites of various topics and themes).

It's very easy for Google to pick up on links pages, reciprocal links, 3-way links, and even paid links. For example, to determine a link page they could easily look at the weight of link text on the page versus regular text. That's why article exchanges are now the rage. However, there are also big problems for your site if you are not careful.

Now imagine that many of the links that point to your site are on pages that Google dumps from their index. In effect, if the page is not in their database then in Google's eyes that link does not exist.

There's a lot more to this story, and I am working on a new site to address these issues. In essence, it will be a site where you can find quality link partners, article exchanges, and even one-way links for your real estate web site.

The goal behind this is to help devise quality site design and implementation standards for real estate link and article exchanges. Unless your link partners employ good practices you will be spinning your wheels trying to obtain quality links.

If all goes well I will have it done by the end of the week and I will post the link.

I definitely look forward to seeing that...

HHI Golf Guy,

Alon this thread I think.

Recieved this today from a link partner concerning Advance Access clients.

"At the advice of Advanced Access I have removed all real estate website
links. Please remove my link from your site as well.

Here's the quote from AA:

"We have continued to advise you to seek out quality links and to dissolve
your links with other real estate agents (particularly other Advanced Access
clients) in an effort to avoid potential issues with Google, and any issues
already occurring in other search engines such as Yahoo""

We are not Advance Access clients or any other like company. Do they have issues with G? What is wrong with links between Real Estate? Have I missed something. We have already culled out the mortgage companies. We are real estate and to eliminate their links would wipe out some of our clients links.

Hope this is in the right thread. If not move it.

Originally Posted by Ralph

"At the advice of Advanced Access I have removed all real estate website
links. Please remove my link from your site as well.

That seems dumb to me. If you have a real estate web site you want lquality links to and from other web sites. Who do they think you should link with, auto body web sites?

"We have continued to advise you to seek out quality links and to dissolve
your links with other real estate agents (particularly other Advanced Access
clients) in an effort to avoid potential issues with Google, and any issues
already occurring in other search engines such as Yahoo""

That sound like AA is worried about cross linked AA sites being percieved as a link network. That makes sense, since the have the same structure - and sometimes the same content.

We are not Advance Access clients or any other like company. Do they have issues with G?

I don't know firsthand of any issues. Then again, I don't take any clients with template web sites. You may find out more info on other forums, including the AA forum (unless it's for members only).

What is wrong with links between Real Estate? Have I missed something. We have already culled out the mortgage companies. We are real estate and to eliminate their links would wipe out some of our clients links.

Linking with real estate web sites is what you should be doing, as long as you are careful. What do I mean by that? You can check out the soon to be re-launched site - Real Estate Link HQ - the site has tons of linking info.

Do me a favor though, don't sign up for anything just yet. I am still re-configuring some of my own domains. Once that is done (by sometime early next week) I will officially re-open the site.

Just to give a little background with AA and Yahoo issues. Part 1 and 2. Hope this helps you understand why AA is trying to make changes. Also not all of the links must come down, just the links to other AA clients as they are all onthe same IP address.

The broader issue here is not just AA sites, but the penalizing of what are perceived link farms by IP address. It was only a matter of time for this to happen, and it will have far greater implications than just with AA websites.

First off, ALL templated companies will be affected by this change. AA will be affected more due to the fact that they have been offering an established linking program for years.

I would also go as far to say that this will affect SEO companies in general due to the fact that from a management perspective, it is easier to manage one or two servers than 10 to 12 servers with multiple IP addesses.

You can get independant IP addresses per website, but it is time consumming and you have to provide a better reason than "SEO purposes" in your application.

It will be interesting to see if this change becomes a permenet change and if so, has the overall value of linking been weakened in the overall Yahoo Algorythm.

Originally Posted by Chief Tutor

The broader issue here is not just AA sites, but the penalizing of what are perceived link farms by IP address. It was only a matter of time for this to happen, and it will have far greater implications than just with AA websites.

That's spot on, buddy!

While we don't have our own web servers, we do use 2 or 3 web hosts for our client sites. When we set up a new account we always make sure that the new site is on a different IP C block than our other sites.

I agree, Chief Tutor is right on. On one of our large sites we had over 80 AA sites that our bot could not find. We checked all manually and many of them took all their links off line. I hope they are working with their webmasters on new strategies. Many real estate sites get a significant amount of business from the web. Hate to think what the SE

I launched Listingofhomes.com about a year and half ago. Have never been listed in Google and really dont care. I get thousands of visitors per day via other search engines who actually crawl the web and report what is there and not what they want to be there. google is destroying the Internet... ever look at their high ranking sites... there all Google Ad Word Advertisers. Its a big Ponzi Scheme. Just build the best site you can and the world will come.... whether google directs them there or not. Good Luck.