SEO, Google and backlinks - discussion and ideas for a beginner

[Slowdive]

Thanks for calling me out the post did not explain clearly or clearly enough.

The old reciprocal link is dead as dead can be and adding sunshade links to your golf blog is just a silly idea.

However the words I choose were content syndication....
For this example my blog is about newsletter marketing

Lets pretend you decided to post a link to one of my articles on this forum, I saw you had done this and in turn decided to post about the dangers of flipping and what a great resource EP is. If I spin my content properly I have borrowed a lot from you guys added some long tail key words to my page and with luck given out quality information backed up by a link to a quality site that is as it happens now reciprocated. I have added quality content to my site and qualified the link with decent information relevant to the content of this website. So I have in essence only done the decent and logical thing by telling my readers where my article was picked up and placing up useful content.

Link value.
I appreciate google warns people away from reciprocal linking and I appreciate why as they days of 10000 strong link pages and webmasters begging links is behind us. There is also the danger of linking into bad neighbourhoods, when you place that link you are condoning that content. However even devalued I still have obtained a quality link that is driving traffic both ways and often one needs to be the first to attract quality outside of forums and social networking.
The difference is also between two respectable sites exchanging a virtual handshake by acknowledging each other with a link and pr 0 sites linking straight back to each others home page or sales page.

Secondly link value also is about what I offer my visitors and if I avoid back links to good sites out of fear of damaging my own SERP or making G angry with me. Then our Google goggles truly have blinded us to how best to use the Internet.

Few end points...if reciprocating a link.
Check the exchange is to a quality site, not just a high ranking one. A site that maintains strict control over its links out and is selective.
Ensure the content and the sites compliment each other.
Ensure your passing link juice to different pages when possible.
Think about if you are offering your visitors some real value....

Further things to consider is your particular site requirements. Some websites are not easy to secure links for, its competitive, its hard to be innovative and your target market is looking for product not content as a rule. No one wants to link in this industry so you buy them, or you accept that in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king and reciprocate and get a few more than the site your trying to beat down.

Also when I look at the linking strategy of competitors I see that reciprocal linking is alive and well and they are still on google. Also they can be really good for traffic and sometimes better traffic than google is sending me anyway.
As always this is just my opinion drawn from past experience and

As a last resort Tell Google to go leap, your trying to run a decent website here (This one is not endorsed by google SEO specialists)

As Always anything written by me should be treated with caution and peform your own DD

[JJMcClure]

As a last resort Tell Google to go leap, your trying to run a decent website here (This one is not endorsed by google SEO specialists)

That's a strange way to view it. Semantic markup and good site structure/navigation is something any competent webmaster should be doing anyway because it helps with cross browser compatibilty (it won't help you rank better), so Google encouraging people to do it (even if it's just because it helps them crawl and index your site) results in people building well structured and coded sites. Everybody wins.

Out of curiosity, suppose you tell Google 'to leap'. What would you change about the way you build sites?

[Slowdive]

That's a strange way to view it. Semantic markup and good site structure/navigation is something any competent webmaster should be doing anyway because it helps with cross browser compatibilty (it won't help you rank better), so Google encouraging people to do it (even if it's just because it helps them crawl and index your site) results in people building well structured and coded sites. Everybody wins.

Out of curiosity, suppose you tell Google 'to leap'. What would you change about the way you build sites?

Ah that last line was specifically aimed at Google dictating my linking policy to me. I have never tried to compensate for google whims not overly anyway. Which is why I can wax lyrical about the importance of heading tags and then scoff at apparently conventional link building wisdom in the same post.
More over symantic mark up is dictated by more than just google it reaches beyond just one corporations preference it is how best to do things for the site. However G would also like you to be using Schema if there news is to be believed, I tried it for my own amusement but will not convert all my sites to please them. Not that is until it becomes part of the wider reaching best practice.

My rule is simple, build quality, populate it with useful content and share information as the internet is intended. Certainly I love trying new ideas, I definitely follow my G ranking but I do not use adsense, I like the traffic but I am not entirely hostage to it. So I do not need to follow googles whims with the same precision as some may feel compelled to. As such if you decide my shopping cart is a great product and I decide your article about it is a great review, a reciprocal link we shall have and google can love it, hate it or ignore it. I will probably get more conversions from your marketing of my product and my guiding my clients to read it first hand anyway.

That said what google says and what it does often differ in my eyes, so I am still not convinced that reciprocal links offer no value, I think they just offer a significantly decreased value.

[Kay]

Secondly link value also is about what I offer my visitors and if I avoid back links to good sites out of fear of damaging my own SERP or making G angry with me. Then our Google goggles truly have blinded us to how best to use the Internet.

I'm not aware of anything in this thread suggesting that linking out was something to be afraid of. (Did I miss something?) Quite the opposite, in fact. I certainly said that I link out to useful sites, when relevant, and hope that by producing useful content others will link to me. Note - not link back to me, as though it was some kind of exchange. Just different people linking to me because there's something in my content they want to tell their own visitors about.

In an attempt to help answer the questions raised in the OP:

I am still not convinced that reciprocal links offer no value, I think they just offer a significantly decreased value.

So why spend your time on it, when you could be spending your time doing something more useful than seeking out reciprocal links?

[Slowdive]

I'm not aware of anything in this thread suggesting that linking out was something to be afraid of. (Did I miss something?) Quite the opposite, in fact. I certainly said that I link out to useful sites, when relevant, and hope that by producing useful content others will link to me. Note - not link back to me, as though it was some kind of exchange. Just different people linking to me because there's something in my content they want to tell their own visitors about.

I am not having a good day here with regards to being, avoid a backlink that ends up being reciprocal, as in my example.

It is also not always fair to assume that reciprocal linking is pre-ordained via email. Some one gave one of my stores a great write up they were buying a raw product from me and making it into something really unique. So I finding this post in turn wrote an article about how awesome their product was.

So if we accept that it can and likely will happen and that a lot of our competition out there still has a lot of recep links floating around, then we may as well make the best of it when the situation arises. Increase site content and user value around a link. Instead of trying to link around some content purely for SEO purposes.

I am also not suggesting base your SEO campaign around reciprocal links but embrace them when it happens or do not run of and slap nofollow on some guy who linked you back out of concern for googles view of on reciprocal linking. I am also advocating that they are not entirely useless for traffic generation and rather possibly to SEO efforts, just not as useful as one way links for obvious reasons.

So why spend your time on it, when you could be spending your time doing something more useful than seeking out reciprocal links?

Depending on your niche it can be immensely tough to generate one way links and once again as opposed to seeking them out sometimes they are synchronous enough to be just a good idea.
If I had a product that combined so well with your product it would be in both our interests to expose our clients to our respective products. Now we can either link up and approve of each other or ignore the opportunity.

You could of course make the link no-follow, to protect oneself from any big G ire. Yet as I said in another recent thread regarding google plus, I think google is getting a better and better idea of who should be connected and allows for this. When I see my competitors rooting out their reciprocal links, until then I'll embrace them as opportunity.

[Kay]

I am not having a good day here with regards to being, avoid a backlink that ends up being reciprocal, as in my example.

Sorry you're not having a good day. Maybe tomorrow will be better. I'm not arguing for the sake of it, but this thread was started by a newbie looking for advice and I think it's important to be clear about what advice we're giving. I don't understand quite what you mean by "avoid a backlink that ends up being reciprocal, as in my example." No one is saying to avoid reciprocal links like the plague, simply that there's little point in seeking them out for the sake of building backlinks to improve your ranking.

I agree with much of what you're saying, anyway.

In the thread about traffic building I wrote:

create synergies - look for non-competitors in a related niche and see how you can create win-wins. For example Dave and I attended an event, enjoyed it, and gave it a great write up. The owner of the event was so pleased with what we wrote about it that he splashed our review in his (large circulation) glossy print magazine, as well as linking to our review from his own website.

http://experienced-people.net/forums...etting-traffic (post #7)

That's a reciprocal link I was very happy about. However, I was pleased with it from the increased (direct) traffic POV, not because of backlinking to increase my SERP.

With a lot of newbies, one of the first things they think about is getting links to their sites. And often they attempt to do that by requesting reciprocal links. Perhaps they should think first about what they're hoping to achieve with these reciprocal links - more traffic?, more"trust" in G's eyes? Only when they know why they are doing it, can they then decide their strategy. Otherwise they're just doing something that fell out of favour years ago, because they read somewhere that reciprocal linking is a Good Thing.

Depending on your niche it can be immensely tough to generate one way links...

It's not so hard if you have a bit of imagination. Looking for sites which will give you links in return for content is quite a quick and easy way to get backlinks from respected and established sites.

[Slowdive]

Haha earlier I meant to post that I am not having a good day with regard to being concise and stating my point. The day other wise has been just dandy, I am pleased to announce.....aside from making my point clearly, clearly .

I do not see it as being argumentative at all, I adopted a rather out there stance. It is certainly important to clarify the information on offer.
Basically I think we both agree on nearly all points actually. I just have an issue with reciprocal linking being viewed as entirely redundant or worse damaging. Sure its very damaging if you go and attach yourself to a link farm or have 10k two way links.

However for a lot of start up sites they offer a potential leg up in traffic and rather possibly SERPS. However I think we have cleared up two vitals point, use extreme caution with who and how you link and do not get confused with making it your focus at any level.

With a lot of newbies, one of the first things they think about is getting links to their sites. And often they attempt to do that by requesting reciprocal links. Perhaps they should think first about what they're hoping to achieve with these reciprocal links - more traffic?, more"trust" in G's eyes? Only when they know why they are doing it, can they then decide their strategy. Otherwise they're just doing something that fell out of favour years ago, because they read somewhere that reciprocal linking is a Good Thing.

Now that is a golden nugget there! A lot of people could save themselves a lot of sorrow if they researched the why of things. This topic and others.

Thanks for indulging me bad word day and all, its been a good topic and having derailed it I will return later with some more practical SEO tips or something.

I'll end of by repeating a very important point...
Increase site content and user value around a link. Instead of trying to link around some content purely for SEO purposes. If you can stick to this your linking policy is not likely to go astray and rather go strength to strength.

[Clinton]

There's a good article today on SEW: Beginner's Guide to Link Prospecting Using Google Search

[gzed]

There's a good article today on SEW: Beginner's Guide to Link Prospecting Using Google Search

And here's a simple way to generate those queries: http://www.soloseo.com/tools/linkSearch.html

[Clinton]

Thanks, gzed. The code on that page says it was developed from an idea in this SEOMoz post and I suggest the SEOMoz page is still a good place to go as it covers several other search options/ideas.