Reciprocal Links???

[brucemcc]

Sorry for the double post.

[minstrel]

Darn! Sorry, brucemcc...

I saw the double post and then, of course, deleted the wrong one.

You were asking how can reciprocal links help your search engine rankings?

This is the basis of Google's system. Basically, it's a system to rate the importance of a particular website relative to all others in Google's index.

The idea is that the more people that link to you, the more "votes" you are getting for "importance" - it's Google's idea of democracy on the internet.

Now, in reality, it gets a bit more complicated and part of Google's recent updates involve that - various tweaks to evaluiate not just how many links point to your site but the relative importance and rfelevancy of those links.

However, as a general rule, the more links you have to your site, the higher you will rank, all other things being equal.

[brucemcc]

I understand the importance of links TO my site.

Is it also important, will it help me, to have more links FROM my site, TO other sites?

Bruce

[cbp]

This an interesting one and I think a consensus is still not evolving.

Linking to other sites is important if you want to get other sites to link to you (ie reciprocal).

BUT, there is a lot of discussion around the value of the outgoing link to your ranking. Here are my thoughts:
1. It will NOT affect PR
2. Google may actually look at the anchor text of outgoing links as part of the relevancy equation to help determine what your site is about (I repeat - MAY do this - there have been arguments advanced both ways) - I make sure the anchor text of outgoing links is relevant to the theme of the page I put the link on --> I am not going to harm myself by doing this and if Google do take it into account, I get a bonus.
3. Under the Hilltop algo and variations on this theory, Google tries to determine what an authoriative/expert site is. One way they can partly do this is if the site has a lot outgoing links on the same theme (if they have, maybe they an an expert on this topic) - so this may help.

Personally, ALL outgoing links from my sites are in the context of the page and are there for visitors to my sites (nothing to do with reciprocal links or 'gaming' the algorithm or etc)

CBP

[fathom]

I will second cbp's comments and add -- all other factors aside you "will" gain in ranking ability.

[savvydog]

I still haven't learned enough about page rank to form my own opinions here, but this article: http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/ clerly seems to indicate that links away from your site will dilute your page rank.

He does say that you can minimize the effect of such links by structuring your site so that any page that "gives away" votes via out-going links also links back to your home page.

Its a pretty equation-heavy article, so you have to dig to understand what he's saying. Even then I'm not sure how to go about proving or disproving his theories.

Any of the seo vets here have opinions about this guy or his work?

David

[compar]

I didn't read the article so I don't know if it is wrong or you are simply confused, but you cannot lose PR by having out going links. What you may be confused about is that the amount of PR that is passed from your page to any other page, in really simple terms, is the page's PR divided by the number of out going links.

Your page PR never changes as a result of these links. But here is one consideration and that might be what the article is saying. Your home page also passes PR to all your internal pages it links to. So if you have a lot of outgoing links from your home page you are reducing the amount of PR that it is passing to all your internal pages.

Now some people get paranoid about this. I think that is stupid. Just put up the outbound links that seem reasonable and sensible and don't worry about the impact on the PR of your internal pages.

[cbp]

I still haven't learned enough about page rank to form my own opinions here, but this article: http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/ clerly seems to indicate that links away from your site will dilute your page rank.

I did not read this article and have been in debates about this many times. Heres some points.

1. I just do not beleive in the real world that this is true - it is true in a threoretical model based on a few sites.

2. During one of the debates I was in mid last year, I had a low PR4 page with 80 or so outgoing links. I deleted them all for 2 months ... PR still stayed the same.

3. So I think if these people who think outgoing links are bad for PR, then the effect must have been so small in my very limited experiment that it was not noticeable.

4. The word 'leakage' in these debates means something different to different people:
a) To some it means that the PR of your page is reduced by having outgoing links (which my experiment showed did not happen in the real world)
b) To some it means the amount of PR a link passes on, is less than the PR of the page that the link is from (which does happen)

5. I question the ethics of anyone who requests reciprocal links and then somehow blocks them being crawled (eg javascript; robots.txt) to avoid passing on the PR. I know of one case in which a site was doing just this - one of their competitors emailed all those who had reciprocal links with the site and pointed this out .... from what I heard (no direct evidence), they lost 2 PR points due to links being taken down. If this is true (and not just a urban myth), then they deserve it.

6) DMOZ has 4 million outgoing links and ~350 000 incoming and can still get a PR of 9

The whole idea of the WWW, is that its a web which implies links.

Having said all that - Forget about PR and links - do what is best for visitors to your site

CBP

[savvydog]

cbp -- well said. I think this is the most important thing I've read on these boards:

Having said all that - Forget about PR and links - do what is best for visitors to your site

Ultimately, any search engine that doesn't reward websites for having great content which is relevant to visitors will, by definition, be sending people to sites where they will have a poor experience. The end result will be the hasty demise of said search engine in favor of some other engine that handles searches with the best interests of their users in mind.

David

[fathom]

Yes cbp -- well said.

More PageRank is not the end goal... better ranking is (to get more visitors and potential more sales).

It's a tradeoff and in the world of give and take -- when you give more you often get more.

The greatest problem with PageRank theory discussions is that they don't include every single "link path" to and from your site -- thus there is a very narrow vision to what is really happening e.g. "if you link out you lose what you gained"... and this is often wrong.

[Jurgen]

Originally Posted by cbp

Having said all that - Forget about PR and links - do what is best for visitors to your siteCBP

And excactely that is what I am trying to do, pleasing my customers, and everything will fall into places sooner or later. Who cares about page ranking and googles... be there, be found, with keywords and content. There ARE visitors coming from other sources then Google.
And if you follow the threads in WPW it tells you that websites are still at the top with keywords and content and a "poor" PR.

The effort should be somewhere different then just page ranking.

Jurgen
www.absolutelyfabulousflowers.com

[cbp]

Here's my logic:

The reason that Google became number one was becasue of the fantastic thing called PR. It worked brilliantly - ie the sites with more and better quality links ranked higher - it was simple and Google quickly became number one because of the quality of its results. Back then, sites ranked high were there naturally and deserved to be (oh ... what a utopia).

THEN we all started swapping links (reiprocals) etc to link our way to the top, regardless of if we deserved to be there or not ... a whole range of tactics got used and sites were suddenly ranking where they would not have ranked naturally.... the rest is history and Google have had to change the way they rank sites because of this manipulation (this includes ethical SEO as well as spam). (Certainly is debatable if the quality has improved).

Whichever theory you want to beleive in that is explaining the recent algorithm changes, we can assume that Google wants to get back to ranking sites where they would naturally be ranked without all the artificial manipulation ....

.... so my logic is that the algorithm should reward sites/pages that do things naturally (eg links are for visitors; links are on the same theme; important sites link to you as you have good content; etc) and devalue sites/pages that do not do things naturally (eg high keyword density; off-theme links; multiple domains; reciprocal links; overoptimization(?);etc). If you look at a lot of the theories surroundung the changes, this fits in with all of them (pretty much).

...so my approach has been to THINK OF THE VISITOR - not sure if I have been full rewarded for doing this, but all of my sites all went up in Florida update and only one went down in Austin update.

CBP

[jwm5411]

Thought I would way in on the topic of outgoing links. I've build several news and info pages for good articles on hair care that I find on the web. My PR for the site has not changed and I am getting incoming clicks based upon the title and descriptions of the outgoing article links. It has done nothing but help. My visitors have found this collection of articles and are coming back.
My vote on this topic is to build good content including appropriate links.

Another comment pointed out on another post...many directory sites have high page rank and they have tons of outgoing links. Outgoing links don't hurt...the web is all links...that's why it's a web.

[Mel]

Forget about PR and links - do what is best for visitors to your site

I agree that you can forget about PR with little effect but if you want to rank on competitive terms you will need inbound anchor text links.

[PhilC]

I'm not stopping to debate this, but there is some misinformation in this thread, which I want to correct.

PageRank is not a matter of opinion and is not open to debate; it's a matter of fact. The facts were published by Brin and Page (the Google founders) before Google was launched. The facts are these:-

Links going out of a site lose PageRank from the site; i.e. the PageRank within the site is diminished by links going out of the site, and the PageRanks of some or all of the site's pages are lowered. Links coming into a site increase the PageRank within the site, and the PageRanks of some or all of the site's pages are increased. Those are the simple facts, and they are not open to debate. To understand why it happens, read Brin and Page's paper on the subject, or any of the many papers and articles that are available on the web - there's one on my site.

The idea put forward by one of the moderators here, that links out of a site eventually come back to the site and the PageRank within the site is increased, is wrong. I proved that in another thread here.

I am not addressing other aspects of links in and out of a site - just the PageRank aspect.

[cbp]

Phil

I agree with you, the outgoing links do "reduce" PR in theoretical models.

How would you explain:

mid last year, I had a low PR4 page with 80 or so outgoing links. I deleted them all for 2 months ... PR still stayed the same.

There were 2 PR updates during that time. I assumed the sites were low PR4, as internal sites linked off them internally were PR2.

CBP

[minstrel]

Can I remind everyone that WebproWorld is about the respectful exchange of opinions and information? The emphasis is on expressing your opinion and respecting differing opinions.

It is going to look like I'm addressing these remarks only to PhilC and criticizing what he said and how he said it, and I want to assure everyone that is NOT the case - I'm actually thinking of a few recent posts by other people in other threads as well as what various people have said in this thread. I enjoy reading your posts, Phil - they are informative, knowledgeable, and often thought-provoking, and I look forward to seeing many more of them. I will however use a few examples from Phil's post to illustrate my point about sharing information and opinions:

there is some misinformation in this thread, which I want to correct.

How about, "There are things which have been said here that I disagree with..."?

PageRank is not a matter of opinion and is not open to debate; it's a matter of fact.

In my opinion, nothing is closed to questioning and debate - the original paper by Brin & Page may have been quite clear (or maybe not) but given that Google has been tweaking their system for months now what it was then and what it is now only Google knows - to that extent, what PageRank is or is not IS a matter of opinion...

The idea put forward by one of the moderators here, that links out of a site eventually come back to the site and the PageRank within the site is increased, is wrong. I proved that in another thread here.

No... you offered a different opinion and you provided what you felt was evidence to support that opinion. I'm not saying you were wrong - I'm merely saying that you didn't "prove" that your opinion was right any more than the other person "proved" that his opinion was right. One of the basic laws of scientific research is that it is extremely rare that anything is "proved" - we just select the explanation which best fits the known evidence at that moment in time. And often, again, that is a matter of opinion - the conclusion you arrive at and the conclusion someone else arrives at may be different even based on the same pool of evidence, depending on what parts of the evidence are given the most emphasis.

[compar]

Ok. I suppose this is a somewhat semantical debate. And we know that PR is the result of several or many iterations of calculation. So can we agree on this.

1. You do not give away part of your pagerank with any link off a page, internal or external.

2. The pagerank that is transfered, but not taken, from your page is dependent on the number of out going links. The more links the smaller the amount transfered to each receiving page.

3. If you continue to add a large number of outgoing links to external pages this will in fact lower the amount of PR that you are transfering to all your internal pages.

4. This means that your internal pages will also on the subsequent iterations of the calculation have less PR to transfer back to your home page via the "home" links.

So if you continue to add subsantial numbers of outgoing links eventually that could be reflected in a reduction of the PR of the home page.

The reason I hate this discussion so badly is that there are people out there who are PR paranoid. They are so concerned that a single out going linlk may destroy their entire PR rating that they don't sleep at nights.

One or two links from a page in a normal site isn't going to make one iota of discernable difference to the page's PR.

[cbp]

compar

2. The pagerank that is transfered, but not taken, from your page is dependent on the number of out going links

This is what I think what Phil is arguing against (please correct me if I am wrong). I think Phil is arguing that the PR of the page IS reduced in this situation.

I have seen some theoretical models based on a few sites where this does happen, but in the real world I have not seen it (see my eg above). In my eg above, if it did happen, the PR loss was so low that its not worth worrying about.

CBP

[fathom]

Originally Posted by PhilC

The idea put forward by one of the moderators here, that links out of a site eventually come back to the site and the PageRank within the site is increased, is wrong. I proved that in another thread here.

I am not addressing other aspects of links in and out of a site - just the PageRank aspect.

You proved nothing in any thread - and I see that you still believe PageRank is mutually exclusive to only some website owners.

I'm a little confused here...

1. first you gain PageRank from inbound links, and

2. and then you lose PageRank from outbound links,

3. but now you say you don't gain PageRank from inbound links if you have outbound links to them.

Clearly this thread is about "RECIPROCAL" Linking - thus your PageRank discussion really should be in that context.

While I'll agree the hording PageRank makes your gained PageRank mutually exclusive to only you (and a 100% lost to those that actually linked to you - I have never ever read anywhere that this is what the original papers had in mind.

Please point out these references - that hording is better for everyone (including those that links to you with no hope of gaining a thing).

I also like to point out "PankRank" is not your end goal -- ranking better is (to gain more visitors and the potential to develop more sales).

More PageRank does not gaurantee you the highest ranks... thus horde all you wish - I'll rank better and that's the aspect you are missing.

[Mel]

Originally Posted by cbp

Here's my logic:

The reason that Google became number one was becasue of the fantastic thing called PR. It worked brilliantly - ie the sites with more and better quality links ranked higher - it was simple and Google quickly became number one because of the quality of its results. Back then, sites ranked high were there naturally and deserved to be (oh ... what a utopia).

THEN we all started swapping links (reiprocals) etc to link our way to the top, regardless of if we deserved to be there or not ... a whole range of tactics got used and sites were suddenly ranking where they would not have ranked naturally.... the rest is history and Google have had to change the way they rank sites because of this manipulation (this includes ethical SEO as well as spam). (Certainly is debatable if the quality has improved).

Whichever theory you want to beleive in that is explaining the recent algorithm changes, we can assume that Google wants to get back to ranking sites where they would naturally be ranked without all the artificial manipulation ....

.... so my logic is that the algorithm should reward sites/pages that do things naturally (eg links are for visitors; links are on the same theme; important sites link to you as you have good content; etc) and devalue sites/pages that do not do things naturally (eg high keyword density; off-theme links; multiple domains; reciprocal links; overoptimization(?);etc). If you look at a lot of the theories surroundung the changes, this fits in with all of them (pretty much).

...so my approach has been to THINK OF THE VISITOR - not sure if I have been full rewarded for doing this, but all of my sites all went up in Florida update and only one went down in Austin update.

CBP

I do not believe for one moment that Google or any other search engine has a desire for pages to be constructed in a natural or unnatural manner, but that they simply don't care.

They do not want excessive manipulation of their algorithm so that non relevant pages rank highly but other than that you are free to do as you please.

IMO search engines do not care if you have a great looking site with lots of good things for your visitors, the very best eye candy or the latest flash twists, or if you do things naturally (I would love to see a definition of what is natural and what is not), or if you have great content etc etc.

Search engines have one and only one goal:

To deliver searchers to the most relevant pages for the search terms.

To the best of my knowledge search engines have no feelings or emotions, they simply rank pages based on a mathmatical and logical alorithm in an attempt to determine the relevancy of a page to a paricular query.

Yes if you want your visitors to be happy you will have to develop attractive pages that are useful to them, but that should not be confused with search engine rankings.

[eightfifteen]

This might be a stupid question, but where are we to put all these reciprocal links?

Am I to build a lame "links" page that brings down the professional look of the site?

I work at an advertising agency, am I supposed to link to our competitors so we get relevant links?

Is it possible to do a page that is an island, with no direct links to or from, and build a links page there, or would google penalize me for that?

[Duncan Pollock]

Mel's last posting and PhilC's reference to "The Anatomy of Search Engine" that Brin & Page wrote when they were first developing Google encourages me to open another forum on the question of whether Google's recent (and seemingly still ongoing) algo switcharoos have an advertising bias to them.
As I'm posting this ahead of such new forum, let me say it should (or so I think) turn up under a heading of "Is Google looking to make more money?"
Duncan

[Mel]

Originally Posted by eightfifteen

This might be a stupid question, but where are we to put all these reciprocal links?

Am I to build a lame "links" page that brings down the professional look of the site?

I work at an advertising agency, am I supposed to link to our competitors so we get relevant links?

Is it possible to do a page that is an island, with no direct links to or from, and build a links page there, or would google penalize me for that?

There are lots of other links besides reciprocal links, nearly all sites qualify for listings in regional directories, in trade directories, in General directories, in sites that offer links to pages with more information on a topic.....

You could build a resources page that provides links to sources of addtional information on whatever topic your site is about, there is nothing unprofessional about that.

As for building an "Island" sure you could, but there are a few practical problems:

With no links how does the spider or the searcher find the page? (If no one can see the page what good is it?)

Without links Google will not index you.

[janeth]

But, if you build an island and can get people to trade links with you then it works great for you but really is not doing the people trading links with you right.

You would gain from there link but they would gain nothing from your link.

Unless you got a couple of people you where trading links with to link to your link page then it would have the pr and you would not have to link to it.

It could be done.

[Mel]

As soon as you add the first inbound link it ceases to become an Island!

[janeth]

Hi Mel,
It would not be an island but you would not be the one linking to it.

So in that case your doing your link exchange partners right and there are no links to it from your site so it is a win win deal.

[eightfifteen]

Thanks Mel,

I didn't even think about local directories and such. I am currently watch over about a dozen sites, many of them that didn't want to spend much money on SEO. This is something that I can tell my clients about, and they can do on their own.