Exchanging links - How Efficient is is this SEO strategy?

Reciprocal links can mean trouble for your backlink portfolio but also have a positive effect in terms of relevancy and supplementing your existing link network. This article will show the narrow path to follow in order to benefit from this highly disputed SEO subject.

In this nebula one thing is for certain - Google becomes more efficient at exposing and demoting dodgy link exchanges.

As a matter of fact, reciprocation in link building is encouraged by major search engines as long as its sole purpose is promoting relevant content among niche related sites.

There are 2 directions to follow

1. Making linking partners outside your niche market. In the short term, position in the SERPs will improve relatively quickly but, in the long run these irrelevant linking partnerships will delay your website from incrementally improve rankings.

2. Staying in your field; although it takes more time to find and initiate quality link exchanges opportunities, keeping the relevancy level high will empower your sites position in that niche's organic listings.

Still, keep in mind that it takes time to build a presence online and brand yourself. The good news is you build a solid foundation for selling your product or service.

SEO is 97% about backlinks and reciprocal links come in handy when you're exclusively after the numbers.

This tactic it's beneficial as it enables you to build relevancy for your website by extensively using targeted keywords as anchor texts.

Junky back links are not a thing to worry about as long as you don't return the favor.

A good way to use link reciprocation is by conducting mutual promotions, where each party promotes the other one within a piece of content posted on their own site, with the afferent link.

From a marketing perspective reciprocal links are especially valued for being an efficient medium for brand promotion. Still, if you can obtain a one way back link the better.

Then again, this statement is contradicted by our incorrigible human nature that constantly cries the "what's in it for me" exception.

The way around this human instinct is to created high perceived value content that others feel they have to reference; and reference with a FREE, collateral back link to your own site.

Another, more subtle approach to promoting your content is to present it among other relevant resources. This gains you credibility and impels the recipient to take note of your suggestions.

As 99% of automated link requests are simply ignored resume using such link scouting tools only to researching. Once a link exchange opportunity is spotted address the webmaster in person.

Discounting Reciprocal Linking

Once you start getting involved with the reciprocal linking networks, consider this:

1. The majority of them are junk website listings. Actually if you take a good hard look you will find that the top positions are occupied by PageRank 0s. Remember that Google has no difficulty in generating a backlink relevancy report for your site; reciprocation with this kind of dodgy sites isn't a desirable note in your resume.

2. At best, these sites reach 10 pages in length, giving them no chance of ranking even in markets with low to no competition at all.

3. Keyword stuffing and hype copy is every spammer's credo. Take a quick look at these available partner sites, and you'll feel their value.

4. All things being said, common sense will tell you that you do not need these artificial linking schemes to get good rankings.