One of the spooks new online publishers get thrown at them a lot is the reciprocal linking scheme devil. Let’s start with what google says about it:
Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:
- Links intended to manipulate PageRank
- Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
- Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
- Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?
It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest.
I’ve highlighted what I think are the most important bits. But first off: realize that this is a diplomatic text, written to make webmasters behave. It’s not a text that lets you in on the ifs and buts of the case.
This blogpost is in response to Brenda asking me what I thought about reciprocal linking, after I’d told her to start a self hosted blog. She thought that the main reason I wanted her to start a blog was to get links. Well, yes and no. Blogs can make some serious money too. Niche blogs moreover can get a niche audience that no general interest squidoo account can rival with. After all, most people are NOT going to be interested in the same mix of things you’re interested in. They are far more likely to be interested in only one or two of your hobbies. Enter niche blogs and websites, newsletters and even twitter accounts.
Brenda asks great questions. Many of the best posts on this blog were in response to her questions. In this case the reason she asked was because she was worried that if her lenses were linking to her blog, and her blog linking to her lenses, this would get her in trouble with Google. I can see why she thought that, but that’s not what Google is warning against.
First of all, let’s repeat the main message in the quoted text above. It’s the third of the things webmasters should not do according to Google: Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
Of course the main difficulty is in deciding what ‘excessive’ means. Well, Google has a baseline here: what normal people do (who don’t care about Google) is not a problem. So any linking you do to your friends, and any linking they do back to you, is not an issue. It’s part of the ’social graph’ we’re all part of. But mom and pop would never do though is say “Link to me and I’ll link to you.”
Another baseline is hidden here: what is your competition doing? A new site cannot afford to be quite as spammy as an old trusted site, but in a niche where nobody has many natural links, having only a few reciprocal links is not going to look as bad as in a niche with lots of high quality content sites with link profiles to match.
What Google is most interested in is also hinted at in the above text: Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice…
That’s why they count links in the first place: to figure out what content is good.
The next thing to remember about links is that they should be on topic. Or in the words of Google: The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. This is why having unpopular but unique pages is good SEO: those few people interested in that topic have a higher chance of linking to it. These links help your overall link profile.
Your overall link profile
What’s that, your overall link profile? It’s the network your online presence is part of. It’s the sum total of links to your content and the content you link to. It’s important that your overall link profile be trusted by Google. However, not all parts of it have to be equally perfect. Google hints at that when it says you should not link to bad neighborhoods on the web. Of course if you’re trying to sell p*rn or forex trading the bar is not as high as when you’re giving off health advice about something other than a certain male appendage. Bad neighborhood is context dependent.
The main thing to remember about your online profile is that on pages you want to rank, you should NOT be linking out to anything that’s off topic or low quality. But blogs you made purely for the sake of promotion can very well link to similar blogs by other squids. When they link to you, that’s part of your social graph and that reciprocal linking adds strength to the whole network. Especially when not all those links are reciprocal – which is bound to happen as not everybody obsesses over links or is equally willing to link out. Why are such links not an issue? Because each squidblog links out to a different set of squidoo lenses – usually on one or two squidoo accounts, with a few high quality squidoo lenses as exceptions. That is: each squidblog has it’s own fingerprint which is unique and while they’re not very high quality usually, they’re also not usually (the ones in my neighborhood anyhow) spammy either.
Perhaps it’s clear by now why it’s so very important that some of those squidblogs DO link out to lenses not made by that lensmaster. It adds a randomizing factor and rewards quality. Google wants to see us rewarding quality. Rewarding quality is a sign of quality, paradoxically. This is one reason I’m so very glad we have people like growwear around and why she was one of the first I ever interviewed.
What I’m trying to do here, is in words, describe the link graph each one of us is part of. That link graph should show two things: on topic links and popularity. Those generous squids who lensroll anything to everything are helping the people they lensroll to a LOT: it shows their popularity. On the other hand, squids who link out to related lenses they did not make are helping the lenses linked to get ON TOPIC links. These are even better. Especially if the page that contains those links has a decent link profile in return. This is why I have a link plexo for lenses devoted to lenses by other people btw.
To get back to reciprocal links… here’s what you have to look out for. I´ve bolded the ones to do with reciprocal links.
- Make sure reciprocal links are not the ONLY links your site, your account, has.
- Make sure you promote your blog outside squidoo as well as in (I recommend Zimbio) on followed sites
- Make sure you don’t ONLY link out to your own online projects. Where necessary for a quality post, lens or hub, link out to sources that complete that topic.
- DO link to your own content related to your lens – whether a blogpost or a hub. And vice versa. ON TOPIC reciprocal links are part of the game.They’re actually a sign of quality.
- DO build your link profile gradually, and in proportion to the growth in content. A new blog will not usually start with hundreds of links to it. Give it 4 or 5 links from prominent on topic lenses to make sure Google knows it exists and build from there.
- Do have a few lenses with link plexos where lensmasters can enter related links. If we all do that, all of our link profiles look better. Especially if we make sure the links in those link plexos really are on topic. An unmonitored link plexo is not a good idea.
- Once your blog is established, do find link plexos where it fits and find blog directories to give it some basic backlinks.
- Niche blogs are great to promote on niche forums and nings.
- Make sure people can subscribe to your blog by email.
Notice only one or two of those involve reciprocal links. The rest is one way. As long as the proportion of reciprocal links within your online profile as a whole isn´t high, you can afford to have a few in there. In fact: reciprocal links are to be expected.
Here’s what I told Brenda: There are those who risk over promoting their content. There are those who risk not promoting their content enough. Only if you’re in the first category should you worry about reciprocal links. If you’re in the second, you should make sure you do get some. Better a few reciprocal links than no links at all. And if you, my reader, are like Brenda, you probably have a few unsolicited editorial links under your belt anyhow. This means you can risk a few reciprocals in the mix.
Don’t mistake: Google WILL figure out the blog and the Squidoo account are related. However, it will only penalize that if it has reason to suspect you’re interlinking more than ‘mom and pop’ would do. And Google does say: Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors? On topic links are rarely NOT to the best interest of your visitors.
The problem is of course that whatever Google may want for the ideal web, the fact of the matter is that most of us do build links for the Google rankings that come along with them. This is a fact of life that Google can’t publicly acknowledge for political reasons. As long as those links are on topic and of different kinds, there really isn’t much Google can do to distinguish smart marketing from ‘genuine popularity’. And what’s the difference anyhow?
Just like you should not rely on ONLY forum links, or ONLY directory links, you should not rely on ONLY reciprocal links. And you will get furthest if you make content that will attract voluntary links from sources you had not even dreamt of getting a link from. Because that content is just plain good. But if you take Google’s advice to the extreme and wait around for those links without doing anything yourself, you’d better get out of this online publishing business. That is just not going to work either.
In the meantime, tags on Squidoo and Hubpages are a great way to mix things up a bit. That is: to get links that are both on topic and in a different neighborhood from the ones you are otherwise able to get. Why are they in a different neighborhood? Because other online publishers have another online network and link profile. By using the same tags they do, you are linking two link graphs together, making both stronger.
I hope that clarified the reciprocal linking spook a bit. Does it?
Before I go into my more irregular traffic patterns, I want to share a traffic pattern which I consider to represent a reasonable ‘normal’ for a successful lens. There are clear ups and downs, but this the result isn’t too spiky.
In roughly the same niche, and made at about the same time, the following lens shows just how much traffic a really trusted site might get off this keyword set. Because my lens was not really all that trusted, it only gets the traffic some of the time. The peaks are when it ranks in the top ten for a shorter keyword, the lows are when it only ranks for longer tail key phrases.While this is as seasonal a niche as the previous one, the traffic doesn’t really show it.
Last but not least – the sorrow of losing traffic. Most of my top tier lenses have had their titles changed at one point or another. In most cases this will not give the lens lasting trouble, at least in my experience. The following lens is the only exception. At least so far. I hope it’s clear from the previous images just how volatile google rankings can be in general. The title change may not have anything to do with the loss of traffic. This is again a seasonal lens with a peak in August and the Holiday season. The peaks do follow that pattern pretty well, except that the second peak is unfortunately much lower.
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