Reciprocal Linking

The saying goes that the more links you have, the more likely you’re going to rank highly in the search engines. This is true. However, there are so many different ways to get links. I wanted to touch on one specific method which is called reciprocal linking. As the words suggest, it is a method in which you and another webmaster exchange links. This exchange of links is a way to get more traffic to your site as well as to hopefully rank in the search engines for the keyword they put with it.

When blogging began to get much bigger, this was a method that bloggers used to get links. They would find other bloggers in their niche, exchange links with them and pretty much share the traffic and link juice of each other’s sites. If you had a PR5 website, though, with 1000 visits a day, chances are, you weren’t going to exchange with a site that was a PR0 with only 10 visits a day. You’d be giving away more than you were getting. So, is reciprocal linking a good move? It has its up and downs.

• Pros: Obviously, you’re going to get traffic from it, so this is a definite pro. The traffic can help you to maybe get more customers as well as get other people in your niche interested. The more interest in your site, the more it will be talked about and the more people may potentially link to you.
• Pros: Linking within your niche shows Google and other search engines that there is relevance. Relevance is the key to getting good links and good rankings. So, by sharing links with other websites in your niche, you show Google you’re a growing authority. That’s power in the search engines.
• Cons: If you just link to anyone and get linked back to from anyone, the power of that link is going to be worth absolutely nothing. Getting a link from anywhere is bad. Niche links are good.
• Cons: By exchanging links, you lose out on some of the link juice. Link juice is the amount of power you can give to another site from your link. The stronger your site, the more you can give. By getting and giving, you lose some of your link juice just as you gain some…Do you really gain anything?

For recognition and getting some link power, reciprocal links are good. However, consider other ways to build links. It can get some traffic to your site which is a plus, but the downfall is the links aren’t the strongest so ranking in the search engines for these keywords won’t be achieved just because of reciprocal links. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve something. Just not much.