Reciprocal links. Things to be careful of when setting up reciprocal links.
Staying on the side of caution
Unfortunately, some use dirty methods to keep visitors on their site, avoid transferring their page rank and passing the weight of anchor text in the outbound links when reciprocating links.
As with any undertaking there are some specific dirty coding tricks to watch out for and other important factors to consider when establishing reciprocal links.
So what you should be careful of when cross linking with other websites?
Reciprocal linking: things to keep in mind before and during your linking campaign
Some rely heavily on developing cross links with other similar content pages on the internet. Building reciprocal linking should be only the part of any websites owner’s linking and traffic generation strategy - not an entire marketing campaign.
And it helps to be on the safe side when swapping links. While cross linking, remember the reputation of your website as well as yours. It is very much on the line as the public opinion, as well as search engine ranking, will in part depend on the quality of your link partners. Thus choose your link partners wisely, check their websites before lining, and keep an eye on it after, periodically checking back.
Selecting your link partners involves a trust issue and, in some situations where reciprocal linking, it may be advisable to stick with people/businesses you have dealt with before if possible.
Things to check for when linking reciprocally
Unethical strategies and tricks
Some webmaster’s use dirty tricks to avoid linking back just to keep their Page Rank and visitors on their site. It would be wise to check that your link is not placed on:
A “dead page” or a page that doesn’t receive any traffic
A page that was not indexed by search engines.
A page that is not linked to from the pages of the site you are trying to set up reciprocal links with.
A page that re-routs outbound links through another page with no Page Rank.
A page disguised with JavaScript.
(It is assumed search engines DO NOT READ the JavaScript and thus DO NOT TRANSFER the desired anchor text weighting or valuable Page Rank)
If any of the above is the case with pages you trying to cross link with your link exchange efforts will be useless in this case. Simply because search engines do not know the link to your website exists, if they can’t, don’t index the page your link supposed to be placed on, or prevented to follow your link in the first place.
Make sure the page that will be linking to yours has been indexed by search engines. It is also easy to check the three major search engine caches: Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Check for quality of content and design of the site you will be linking to:
What kind of reputation does it have online?
Would you be satisfied if your website had the same reputation?
Would others want to link to you if a website you intend to exchange links with belonged to you?
Be wary of “free-for-all” sites or “link farms”. These sites create link directories and place the link to your site in exchange for your email address. Majority of these sites are low quality. Do not link to link farms.
Be cautious about all the hype “automatic link exchange software” creates. A lot of link exchange software doesn’t work properly with many charging a fee for a shoddy service. A human mind is always smarter than any software, and this applies to reciprocal link exchange and placing also. Do a thorough research, if you decide to use automated link exchange software.
Certain DON’Ts of reciprocal linking
Do not...
… link to websites reciprocally whose owner’s will not give you any or equal value in return.
… link to sites that do not have complete or partial contextual relevance to your own website/page.
… exchange links with “dead pages” or web pages that are not indexed by search engines.
… place link to a page that has no Page Rank.
… cross link with websites that use “NO-FOLLOW” tricks in robots.txt file or use JavaScript coding for outbound links.
Building reciprocal links takes time and concentrated effort, so be patient and your work will pay off. And do not get discouraged, reciprocal linking or cross linking is a sure way to build your website’s public awareness, raise page rank and eventually generate targeted traffic that will bring you desired results, whatever their nature may be. This is especially practical strategy, if you just starting out.
