Search Engine Marketing Blog

A lot has been, and is still being, said about reciprocal linking - that you should do it, shouldn’t do it, it’ll kill your site, rob your family, give you cancer, make you rich and so many other rubbish absolutisms.

The reality is that reciprocal linking is the same as any other form of linking - it works or it doesn’t depending on what site is linking to you, where they’re linking from and how the link is placed within the context of the particular page it’s on.

And you can forget PR (page rank) right now. Just forget it. OK, I admit that’s impossible. But at least you can try to ignore it a bit. PR is not the important factor in whether or not you should ask for or accept a link exchange with another site.

I have been doing link building since long, long before SEO even had a name much less an anacranym and link building as a term hasn’t yet been coined. And I know for a fact that some reciprocal link building yields traffic and even sales (or sign ups, downloads, whatever the desired action might be) but they have to be the right reciprocal links.

So which reciprocal links are worthwhile?

• Links on extremely relevant sites/pages. Links for a casino site on a Stanford university student’s page is not relevant.
• Links that are placed so as to be noticeable - links and resource pages are fine provided your link isn’t buried amidst 50 other links. If it’s 1 of 10 and they are all totally on topic you’re in for some good click throughs.
• Button links, banner links, well worded text links, links that stand out in some way and scream “Click ME”. (Note that they have to be static, html links, not plagued by nofollow, rotating banners or tracked by javascript else search engines can’t credit them as a link to your site.)
• Links that are accompanied by relevant text such as a full description of your site or better yet the site owner uses your link within his page text as a noteworthy place to get more relevant information from and so on.
• Links that are the cited as THE information source for something or other: “For more information on blue alligators visit the blue alligator site”. It doesn’t really matter what it is so long as your site actually has that information and it is the one cited as the chosen reference.

Technical things to watch out for when exchanging links include:

• nofollow tags in either the header code or the actual link code itself
• javascript redirects which can take quite a few forms
• other forms of redirected links
• links being placed on a page that is listed in the site’s robots.txt as Disallow - meaning search engines are banned from spidering that page
• links on pages that are buried inside a frame or iframe - both of which are accessible to search engines but more difficult for them to get to than a standard page
• flash links - again, Google can index them but you can’t be sure it will

If you are in doubt simply ask politely for a good old fashioned static html link. If they ask you what you mean send them the list above stating that those are what you don’t want.

You are after traffic but you also need the search engines to index the link to your site and credit it to your site’s link popularity. Why shouldn’t you have the best of both worlds?

Happy link building!

Link buying is not always necessary. In fact, it’s not even always a good idea. Sometimes it’s just a complete waste of both time and money.

Link buying should not be an automatic reaction to launching a new site. Whether or not you buy links should depend on a number of factors and, like any other part of your online marketing strategy, should be assessed with the pros and cons, costs and benefits being weighed against each other.

IF - Do I need to buy links for this site?

Each new site or soon to be launched/revamped site gets a marketing plan including a link building assessment which states:

• What does the site already have in terms of inbound links?
• How much more does it need to meet its listing goals?
• What sort of link building should we do for it?
• Can we link to it internally?
• Do we need to buy links?
• How many, what type, can we re-use existing suppliers?
• Budget?

Questions to be considered are:

• Can we get the same quality (or better) links for free? - One possible method is to do requests for free links and wait to see if there is much positive response.
• Can we get the same quality (or better) links using the our own sites from reciprocal or triangular link exchanges?
• Can we provide high quality, relevant links from within our own network?

Once it has been decided that link buying is a necessity, consider:

When and What - Criteria for assessing a particular link buy:

• Relevance of the site in general and the page in particular
• Search engine friendliness of site and page we’re buying the link on
• How well interlinked to the rest of the site is the page we’re buying the link on
• Page rank of page we are buying link on
• What else is on that page (links/content)
• What else is on the site (anything we wouldn’t want to be associated with?)
• Age of site
• Inbound links to site (how many, what type, where from)
• Do it have Dmoz, Yahoo, Wikipedia, .edu or other safe links?
• What is the traffic as reported by Alexa or the site if they’re handing out such info
• Price – is it negotiable or can we get more for the same price
• The duration of the link buy (permanent, monthly, annual) – and is it negotiable
• The communication quality (polite, professional, hurried, bossy)

Where and How Much - Price, Placement and Duration:

• Always try to get a discount or longer deal (permanent if possible) or multiple links or links in a better spot.
• Negotiate on placement, try to be set apart from the other outgoing links. Banners are good – links integrated into page content are best, footer and side links are not ideal.
• Permanent is best, long term is good. I very rarely enter into deals with a duration of less than a year - this saves on admin and renegotiation time.

Conclusion: Link Building is Hard Work

Successful link buying requires just as much planning, research and analysis as other link building methods. And then on top of it you have to pay! So make sure it’s worth it.

By the way, link buying should be thought of as online ad purchasing. Yes, yes, I know you also want to boost your PR but it is an ad just as much as it’s a link. If you pay for it that makes it advertising, simple. So treat it like an ad and assess the potential ROI - of both money AND TIME - before jumping into it.

When you begin a link building campaign you probably almost always begin by searching through relevant Dmoz categories. However, there are other starting points that should also be on your research list.

Whilst Dmoz gives you standard directories and company sites these other resources list highly rated and respected information resources and associations and government sites, most of which are very old and well linked to by other very old and well linked to sites. Thus, a link on any of them is worth several “normal” links. These are authoritative references - the holy grail of link building.

There are of course other authoritative resource sites that could also be consulted as starting points and I would be happy to hear about any you come across that you feel may qualify (note: standard directories are not usually considered authoritative).

I would suggest that you create a Link Building Resource or similar folder in your Bookmarks (Favourites in IE) and add these to it for easy access. I’ve divided them into two groups in case you don’t have time to do them all.

Top Tier - Must Consult:
1. Open Directory
2. Beaucoup
3. Librarians’ Internet Index
4. Digital Librarian.com

Second Tier - If You Have More Time:
5. Where To Do Research
6. WWW Virtual Library
7. British Library Industry Guides - look for the Internet Sources on each guide.
8. Intute A-Z List
9. BUBL Information Service - requires some digging to find the correct topics as it is laid out by librarians and academics, not online directory builders.
10. Internet Clearinghouse - you have to dig down to get the links but it is a huge reference so worth the work.
11. Internet Public Library - you might even be able to obtain a link here if your site is good enough.
12. WWW Virtual Library
13. Internet Search Engines List
14. Search Engine Colossus

Link builders go about their business in various ways. Some have an “email anything you see approach”, others do a bit here and there and others do a set amount of link requests and hope for the best.

Possibly because I have done link building campaigns for clients I tend to take a very organised approach, complete with a link building plan and schedule.

Here’s an example link building campaign planner:

Link Building Plan Checklist

Assessment
• Domain
• Site’s history if any
• Inbound links (number, type, relevance, quality)
• Rankings if any
• Purpose of site, potential value, objectives
• How many and what type of links are now required to meet the site’s objectives
• How easy/difficult will it be to obtain those links, do we need to buy some (see

Requirements
• Links from our sites?
• Safe links? Org, edu, wiki, dmoz, yahoo directory
• Bought links? Where, what type, how many, budget, can we use existing contacts, can we swap already purchased links
• Directory links? Are they worth it, do we need them
• What other links? Articles, swaps, blogs, forums, be imaginative

Plan
• We require X amount of links from:
o Safe
o Bought
o Directory
o Other (be as specific as possible)
• We can offer:
o links from this site
o our other sites
o payment only
o article placement
o other (be imaginative)
• Our budget is
• Our timescale is (all in a week/several rounds spread over three months, etc)
• Overall responsibility lies with
• The requests/research will be divided as follows:
• An assessment will be done on (date)

Yes, I know it seems like more of a battle plan than a link building campaign but I happen to take it very seriously and after years of promoting websites, both clients’ and my own, I think I can safely say that I know the value of a thoroughly planned and well executed link building campaign.

Link building is an incredibly time consuming process and it is often a very hit and miss affair. Getting all your ducks in a row before you begin could go a long way towards improving your success rate both in finding and obtaining the right type of links.