Is Reciprocal Linking Dead?

Reciprocal linking used to be a widely acceptable method of gaining website traffic. It is synonymously linked with popularity. This used to help websites get a good page rank among search engines. Unfortunately, this has been abused by several webpage developers. They do this by creating too many unnatural links just to ensure that they land one of the topmost ranks in a search engines list.

Why would people believe that reciprocal linking is dead? The “Jagger” update by Google to change their criteria in optimizing their searches to get a good page rank for their page listing had created uncertainties and confusion among website developers/owners. This is probably because Google had gone wary on those websites that falsely represent themselves by buying links or making too many links that doesn’t really contribute to the webpage’s popularity. Thus, being one of the biggest web crawlers today, any decision it makes has an impact within the internet community.

Many advocate the death of reciprocal linking because of these abusive webmasters. These people create reciprocal links to sites that are a lot different and unrelated to each other instead of focusing into developing quality web pages. However, there are still search engines that still use reciprocal linking as criteria in ranking pages into their listing. Google does not totally eliminate reciprocal linking but has implemented enhanced policies and procedures in determining page ranks that can easily identify unnatural links.

After all that has been said and done, reciprocal linking may not be actually that bad at all. Non-internet based businesses that make use of websites for accessibility and information campaign may not be entirely affected by the phasing-out of reciprocal links. This is because some of them have targeted markets, while a few of them are very popular  within their respective markets. They only link to other companies that they are affiliated or are working with. They link not because they want traffic but because it is best for the company’s intentions and business. This can actually become a good model to other website developers particularly those that depend on the internet to generate income.

With this, reciprocal linking still works among the other search engines. It is not categorically dead. But, with the dwindling popularity of reciprocal linking and Google putting more emphasis on other criteria to optimize its searches, reciprocal linking may not be a viable option in the near future.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 6:11 am and is filed under How To Build Link. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.