minstrel from DigitalPoint has done a test to see what is the value of Reciprocal Links.
Results (after a year) and details are listed below:
Reciprocal links are not dead. Weren’t dead before. Aren’t dead now. I know it and you know it. But for just a second let’s pretend otherwise.
On one of my sites I created a master testing page. From this page I linked to eight new pages created specifically for this test. Each of those pages contained a few paragraphs of content with the word “reciprocallinksarenotdead” linked to an external web site. The goal was to watch the search results to see what sites appeared in the SERPs for our test term.
For the sake of creating a good testing ground, we linked to four sites that linked back and four sites that didn’t. From here we split things up even further by linking to two sites in each group to that we considered to be “high authority” for their industry, and two that we considered to be “lower authority” for their industry. We then split this again using one to link using the target site’s keyword in the link and the other not. Got all that? No? OK, let me put it to you this way (the links below take you to the test pages):
Links to reciprocal linking sites (see original article for links):
· Link to a low authority site using keyword
· Link to a low authority site
· Link to a high authority site using keyword
· Link to a high authority siteLink to non-reciprocal linking sites
· Link to a low authority site using keyword
· Link to a low authority site
· Link to a high authority site using keyword
· Link to a high authority site
……The Results
These were the results as of Friday, July 12, 2007. …….Google results
1. Low authority, non reciprocating site
2. Low authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)
3. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
4. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
5. Test page linking to #9 below
6. Test page linking to #2 above
7. Low authority, reciprocating site
8. High authority, reciprocating site
9. High authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)
Google supplemental results show the remainder of the testing pages. Missing from SERPs: High authority, non-reciprocating siteYahoo Results
1. Low authority, reciprocating site
2. High authority, non-reciprocating site
3. High authority, reciprocating site
4. Test page linking to #8 below
5. Test page linking to #2 above
6. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
7. Low authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)
8. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
9. Link to a blog post that uses keyword as part of the URL
Missing from SERPs:
· Low authority, reciprocating site
· High authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)
MSN Results
1. High authority, reciprocating site
2. Test page linking to #10 below
3. Test page linking to #1 above
4. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
5. Low authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)
6. Low authority, non reciprocating site
7. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
8. High authority, non-reciprocating site
9. High authority, non-reciprocating site
10. Low authority, reciprocating siteThe Happy Ending
We can conclude from that that, all things being equal, reciprocating links have no more or less value than one-way links. Yeah, I know, we all read Matt Cutt’s post about how excessive reciprocal linking can hurt, and I’m sure Matt is right. But the key word there is “excessive”.
If you go overboard then it can have a negative effect. But hopefully this will stop some of the ludicrous behavior going on these days where no one wants to link to anyone else because they perceive that it will create a Reciprocal Link that will make all other links from that site “worthless”.
6 Responses to “Reciprocal Links - Still Working Great in Moderation”
if you believe anything matt cutts says you doomed…. its like he is the politician for google…..seriously did anyone believe anything geroge bush said ?
if you believe anything matt cutts says you doomed…. its like he is the politician for google…..seriously did anyone believe anything george bush said ?
[…] To prove my point read this study on the effects of site relevant reciprocal links Take a look at this analysis of Google’s own patent Or just look at your average everyday pair of blogrolls. They’re full of recips. […]
Good to feel while reading this post. i do agree that Reciprocal Links are Good in SEO. but this Reciprocal links exchange should be done only in content pages of website not in link page or resource page.The Crawlers visiting website, crawls the content of the website. so its better to do link exchange in content page of website. also see to that the website to which we are exchanging link should not supposed to have more external links say more than 30 links. its really an effective condition to apply while doing reciprocal link exchange coz website having more external links will get spammed by Google.
I know this is a month old, but I thought developments on the original poster’s site were interesting. This “experiment” was actually first posted by Stoney deGeyter over at searchengineguide.com (minstrel at digitalpoint just copied and reposted it with a link to the original). Now, they’ve posted a “letter of surrender” in response to Google’s threats of punishment for paid links–in this case, advertising on searchengineguide.com’s site.
I’m really new to SEO, so I’m confused. Google can’t distinguish paid links from exchanged links–which is like paying links with links–right?
So….is there some kind of magic number of exchanged links you don’t want to go over for fear of drawing negative google attention?
Thanks for the info and I’m enjoying the blog.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Interesting. I have to admit I was apprehensive about putting reciprocal links on my sites that I cared about because of the effects, so it’s good to have this cleared up. Although I’m sure Mr Cutts is a regular reader here, so we’ll see how long this lasts.