I own five websites (all online since the mid 1990s), and only one of them makes money (real money, ie). And it is the site I was least interested in, and did virtually nothing to promote. All I did - back in 1995 - was submit it to the search engines. I knew nothing about
SEO, reciprocal linking, etc. As far as I know, there are no inbound links to this site (a site search on Google gives zero results, and it actually doesn't even appear to be listed in Google (I've just checked, and it doesn't show up for any relevant search terms).
I have never advertised this site; never paid for clicks; never requested reciprocal links - in fact I have never done anything at all to advertise or promote this site, or make it "search-engine friendly (and it evidently isn't!). Yet, as I said, this is the only one of my websites that has made serious money for me.
It is a different story altogether with my other websites. I spent years trying to promote them, using every method available - carefully optimizating the site, paying for clicks on Google, paying to be listed in Yahoo, seeking (and getting) thousands of link exchanges with other *relevant* websites. There is very little that I haven't tried (and spent money, energy and endless hours in front of my PC) in my efforts to get traffic, search-engine positioning etc., for these sites.
Yet it is the other site - the one I'm not really interested in (I set it up, initially, for a bit of fun, and to practise my html skills) that continues to get all the traffic - WITHOUT reciprocal links, WITHOUT advertising or promotion, WITHOUT even being listed on Google (I've just checked, and the site has a Google
PR rank of 2).
At this stage I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that all this stuff about page rank, SERP, reciprocal links, even search engine inclusion, is complete baloney; a scam on a grand scale by Google (and others) to extract money from individuals and businesses who need (or think they need) to have "a presence" online.
A whole industry has grown up around this "need" - companies who will get your site listed in search engines for a fee; companies who will optimize your site so that you will get (in theory) thousands of visitors every day - etc. And you get forums (or fora, if you prefer) - like this one - where experts and self-styled experts argue endlessly over the minutiae of
SEO, and whether this or that technique is effective, or "permitted" by Google (Google has become a dictator) - like theologians arguing about how many angels can dance on the end of a pin.
It's all rubbish! Google isn't anywhere near as "intelligent" or as important as everyone is giving it credit for being. At the end of the day, you either have a website that people want or need to visit, or you don't.