SEO Dirty Secret #3

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SEO Dirty Secret #3
	If you publicly declare that you actively participate in reciprocal linking, you may risk being considered a laughing stock in the seo industry. They may reference you as using old techniques that Google snuffed out a long-time ago. And they'd all be wrong. Truth is, many people reciprocate links. If you are on Twitter and follow someone, and they in turn do the same, guess what? That's a reciprocal link my friend. It's taken a different name and methods of acquisition are cleverly nested in social networks and blog comments (or more specifically, trackbacks). Why is reciprocal linking deemed as a long-forgotten technique? Like everything else in the search space, as soon as a method is found that will help you get ranked in Google, it gets abused until Google decides to tweak the algorithm and de-value that method. Also, it takes WORK to get links from other webmasters, and don't forget about the upkeep needed to make sure your partners are still upholding their part of the bargain. If done properly, reciprocal links are extremely powerful. Think about it from Google's perpsective. They find a site that has a list of links pointing to related websites. For this example, let's say you sell Alpaca clothing. If your site links to other websites that sell clothing, footwear and fashion accessories, then you are providing valuable links to the visitors of your site with those links. When Google visits those sites and finds the same qualities, and those sites linking back to your Alpaca site, then that helps your site achieve rankings in the search results. We all hate getting unwanted emails, especially when someone is asking for a link on your site. But don't be so hasty in hitting the delete button. Take a few moments to read the message. By now, we all should be able to sniff out an automated or boilerplate email where all the sender did was grab our email address from a database and paste it in. If you do get an email where the person actually took the time to browse your site, make some comments about a certain post or article found on your site, you might want to take them up on the link offer, since chances are they will also be doing the same with your competitors as well. Another quirk of the Google algorithm is that they love seeing links from the "Big Guys" to the "Little Guys" - and you'd be amazed to learn that it's easier to get those links than one may think. So, while it takes time, effort and patience, it still makes sense to get reciprocal links to other sites that similar to yours. The last tidbit of this article is this: if your linking partners stay true and continue to grow their online presence, your site will be seen as a trusted site as well via the link from those sites. Enjoy the ride, Paul Bliss	Related Articles: SEO Dirty Secret #1 SEO Dirty Secret #2 Optimization Articles Feed