In short, yes, it works, for SEO.

But it depends on which site you're linking with.

First, Google doesn't count every inbound link to your website. It only counts the links from websites that it feels has a certain level of authority. Spam sites are not counted for obvious reasons.

There are also many websites that Google cannot index for a variety of reasons, including slow responding servers, or an inability to resolve a domain name on a dynamic IP address. If these websites have links pointing to your site, obviously they won't be counted.

Google doesn't index links contained within Javascript.

Content duplication is another reason why so many inbound links are not counted. If the same list of links is duplicated across several websites, it doesn't count them all. The same with Blogrolls duplicated across all pages of a blog. Google will only count a few of the pages.

But I do know that one-to-one reciprocal linking works because I've done this with many of my websites, and I can see it in using Google's "link:" operator. This is how you can tell if reciprocal linking helped your overall SEO, by seeing if the inbound link shows up on this search. Type "link:http://www.yoursite.com" to see which inbound links Google has credited to your site.

How to Choose a Reciprocal Link Partner

Trade links with websites that publish unique content. Two real estate agents trading links with each other is perfect. Both will get an SEO benefit.

However, if your website has a higher PageRank than your link partner, it's true that you'll pass more PageRank into their site, than what you'll get back. But not always.

The amount of PageRank that gets passed through to another site is determined by the number of links on that page. If you're linking to another agent's site from your homepage, and your homepage has a total of 20 links, including links to other sites and links to within your site, the PageRank that you transfer is divided by 20. So, if your homepage has a PageRank of 1,000, you'll transfer a value of 50 to the other site.

But if your partner's homepage has a PageRank of 600, but only had 5 links on their homepage, then he'll transfer a value of 120 to you.

Hence, a reciprocal link where you give out 50, and get back 120, is a pretty good deal. Who says one-to-one reciprocal linking doesn't work??

Remember that "PageRank" is a different animal than the PageRank you see on Google's Toolbar. The real PageRank I'm referring to is the much larger number that Google uses in its algorithm. The single-digit number you see in the toolbar is just an abbreviation of the real PageRank.

Get Links from Blogs

When discussing a reciprocal link exchange, often times I request a link from someone's blog. Google seems to love blogs.

I'll just ask for a mention within a blog article, which most bloggers feel is pretty easy to do.

Blogrolls are ok to reciprocate links from, but watch out. But some blogs have very long lists of blogroll links. In order to maintain them, bloggers often utilize a blogroll management system hosted by a third-party, such as Blogrolling. This third-party then gives the blogger a piece of Javascript to deliver the blogroll links. Google doesn't index Javascript, thus you're not getting any SEO value from it.

Also, bloggers tend to edit their blogrolls, and over time, they may forget about your link exchange, and remove you. This is why getting linked through a blog post is better.

Link Partners to Watch Out For

Be skeptical of trading links with link directories, or agent directories. Most of these won't earn you any SEO benefit. It's not always a black-n-white decision on which directories will work for you, but generally, Google counts links that were created by the publisher's choice. Most directories don't reflect personal choice, rather they're sites where anyone can get a link for some kind of consideration, such as payment, or reciprocal link.

The reason why reciprocal linking works between two agent websites, is because it mutually agreed upon by each agent, and because agent websites are not directories!

I used to have a partnership with Advanced Access, a company that creates real estate agent websites. They maintained a directory of links to various real estate information sites, and included a link to this site (RealEstateHow). They placed that directory on every agent site they created. My site was linked up from hundreds of agent sites across the USA. In return, I linked to back to each agent site from an agent directory that I maintained. In the end, I didn't pick up much benefit from this. Google didn't credit any of those inbound links to me, with the exception of a few. Meanwhile, I was passing through thousands of PageRank points to Advanced Access' clients. I was giving out PageRank, and getting virutally none back. Now, I don't do that anymore, and Advanced Access doesn't link to me either.

REL="no follow"

Google provides an attribute for the anchor tag called, REL="no follow". It tells the Google spider not to follow this link. Here's how you use it...

<a href="http://www.realestatehow.com" REL="no follow">Real Estate How</a>

Another website can insert this attribute to a link pointing to your website. It will negate any SEO value to you. If you conduct a link exchange, you'll want to check the inbound link (look at the source code), to make sure they didn't put this attribute in there.

For More Linking Tips

Read my archive page of linking tips, and Backlinks.

Labels: Reciprocal Linking