Reciprocal Links Hurt SEO

Submitted by: KevinB

Excessive reciprocal links can do more harm than good for your SEO strategies. Search engine optimization techniques generally involve some reciprocal linking, however, excessive reciprocal linking can have an adverse affect on the trust factor applied to your domain.

Ideally, when you have launched a new website, you will seek out relevant sites in the same niche and exchange links in order to make your website more visible to search engines. If you are lucky, an established site will agree to a mutual link exchange and both sites may benefit as a result.

The main problem with reciprocal linking and the harm it causes to your overall SEO is when excessive reciprocal links are placed on a site. The trust factor is dampened and more doubt is placed on the domain as being 'artificially' linked to. The more desired approach is to gain one-way internal links above reciprocal linking.

In terms of directory listings, reciprocal links do more harm than good as they are vaguely related to your site but are not contextually related. In this case, using directories that offer inbound links only will add more perceived authority to your site. It is also wise to seek out specialist directories that give one-way inbound links as they offer more relevant information and more usefulness to their visitors.

All webmasters should look at alternative link-building strategies that offer relevant one-way links to their website.Text Link Ads are one of the alternative methods that can offer permanent inbound links to your website and are normally paid on a recurring basis. This offers a quick way to achieve relevant inbound links.

Another method that many webmasters consider is Article Distribution. This method can be relatively cheap in terms of the cash cost involved, although can become time consuming if you regularly submit articles for distribution. This can be extremely effective when your article is high quality.

If article distribution becomes time consuming, then there is always the option of looking at hiring someone to perform the Link Building Service on your behalf. This generally involves having an article or two written that contains relevant links and it is then distributed to a network of other sites. All articles that get republished should keep the links live and therefore providing several relevant one-way inbound links.

Overall, the SEO of your website can benefit greatly if you focus more on gaining relevant inbound links than attempting to secure sheer quantity of links. If you can gain high quality inbound links, there will be no requirement to have any reciprocal links on your own site. Although providing useful information to your visitors should be your main concern, so offering relevant outbound links may just see your site receiving more trust in the eyes of search engines.

About the Author

KevinB is an article researcher for various topics including Internet SEO Articles for Ad-Matrix.net article directory.

Article Source: Ad-Matrix.net