Are You Actively Getting Reciprocal Links Right Now…. If you are and believe this to be good for your online business then you need to read this post.
When most people start out online the very first thing they hear about for marketing their business is reciprocal links. Before you do any form of marketing that relates to articles read this post.
So is this right or is this the wrong marketing method to use…
The short answer is “WRONG”, and here is why….
Reciprocal Links Are Not As Effective As They Once Were
It’s all well and good to exchange links with associated websites but you really need to be looking at the bigger picture, Google does not like or really want you to be swapping links with other sites.
Especially when a few years back there were many sites offering reciprocal links through link exchange services which in actual fact ended up be no more than link farms.
Because of the many schemes involving links there have been many changes to Google’s Algorithm making it very hard for any one exchanging reciprocal links to get very much benefit, so really you are wasting your time.
If you were to get a reciprocal link I think the only time I would consider it viable for a new website is if the linking website was a PR4 or better, even then the benefit would be minimal.
Hopefully you can see a picture here, that if you are putting a lot of effort into getting reciprocal links you are really wasting your time and precious resources on something that just is not effective anymore.
Change Your Mindset, Think One Way Inbound Not Reciprocal
Google today is all about inbound links where a website is linking to you because you have something useful to share with that sites visitors. In the eyes of Google this is a more natural way of getting links making it more valuable to you at it is like someone is voting for you content.
Update January 12th 2014: Before building any new links to your site you may now what to rethink using keywords, in December 2013 John Mueller (Webmaster Analyst At Google) announced that they would prefer that keywords are not used in hyper-linking. This goes for not just external links but internal links as well. You can find out more about John Mueller by reading this post.
So How Do I Get Links If They Are Not Reciprocal
Firstly you have to understand what it is Google wants and work with that strategy in mind. But firstly why is this post only centered around Google, simply because this is where you are going to get most of your free traffic and links.
Google likes inbound links that are coming from a site that is relevant to yours, in other words inbound links are not that effective if a site is themed around affiliate marketing and its sub niches but has inbound links coming from a health related site, it does not look natural, and is about as effective as a reciprocal link.
So if you are actively sending out emails to webmasters trying to get reciprocal links back to your site you need to stop right now!
How To Get Inbound Links
The easiest and most effective way of getting in bounds links to your site is by writing content that is firstly unique and adds value to the readers, by doing this you will have an unlimited supply of inbound links from sites that are relevant to you and your business, they find your content and link to it for the benefit of their readers giving them more credibility and you.
Once this starts to happen you will also notice that social networking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter and even Facebook start to pick up your stories through their users.
It Still Leads The Way…
You can also use article marketing in your strategy to promote your online business, and if done the right way can give your business an even bigger boost. Article marketing has been around for many years and has always been the most effective way to get inbound links, however your articles need to be informative and of course unique. Learn more about that strategy here.
How To Increase One Way Inbound Links Fast…
If you really want to send your business into overdrive then you need to look at writing articles that are related to your niche market and then contacting webmasters of any authority sites in your niche to see if they are interested in having you do a guest post on their site.
You might think that this is a very time-consuming and tedious thing to do but the benefits can be huge to your online business especially if the site you are guest posting on has a large following and the information you are providing is what those site visitors are interested in. Effectively you are branding your business.
Another thing also happens when you are writing guest posts that are attracting attention, other webmasters will start to contact you making it very easy for you overtime to build up a network of sites that are related to your niche. We have done many guest posts on other people’s blogs and static HTML sites and are now constantly contacted not only to write for other sites but to have articles placed on our site as well.
This not only makes our site look more like an authority in its niche but gives us fresh unique content which is exactly what the search engines want to see. Doing your article marketing in this way is a winning situation for all concerned and has great benefits to those that realize the power of guest posting.
So if you think that reciprocal links are still effective after reading this post then keep doing it… And for those that really want to have an impact online we have given you a few options to consider hopefully you will take action and forget about looking for reciprocal links.
As a side note, if you are using article directories to place content this is also still a suitable way to brand your business on the internet. Yes we understand that many of the article directories were effected by the latest Google changes but they still have traffic and still have people looking for information, so why not use them to get exposure for your business after all it’s free. If you used any article submission services then you may want to read this post.
Are you still seeing success with reciprocal links, if so let us know by placing your comments below.
Directory Submission is another way of getting one way links also i was curious Does 3 way link exchange is also less effective as Reciprocal Links ?
One way linking is the best way to get links of course and there are many ways to achieve this, 3 way linking is nearly the same as one way linking so it is better than reciprocal links.
Reciprocal links still do work when used correctly and if you are going to get involved in reciprocal linking it is better if you can have links placed with in the site content rather than a link directory on that site. Most search engines do not give any weight to links that are on a link page on the the reciprocal site.