Clicksharp Marketing

Link building — so essential, and yet so many options. All those SEO tactics are roads pointing in different directions. How do I know that the road I choose will pay off in the long run?

Not all roads point to SEO success.
(Photo by jeremy_vandel)

SEOs (yes, optimizers get to share the acronym with optimization) of all shapes and sizes all tend to arrive the same crossroads every so often: in building inbound links to your site, are reciprocal links worth the trouble?

The answer is no. Here’s why:

It’s true that any link headed your way will help you. But turning that inbound link authority 180 degrees and sending it right back to the source dilutes most or all of the positive effects, leaving you with little to show for your time and effort.

There was a time when this strategy worked… but essentially, it began to be clear that this practice turned search engine rankings into a big popularity contest. As soon as it compromised the objectivity of real authorities, Google and friends quickly squashed it.

At least that’s how many SEOs tend to look it. Chances are reciprocal linking will have little or no effect.

But we’re a solution-focused group, so here’s what you can try instead:

1) Request unique anchor text (the text that is underlined in the link to you) which hasn’t been used by a lot of other inbound links (so your company name or URL is probably a bad candidate) — this applies to your incoming link as well as the outbound link from your site to your partner.

2) Leverage a deep linking strategy. That is to say, rather than following a format such as www.you.com >> www.otherguy.com, you’re probably better off linking from a sublevel page on your site (”A1″) to a sublevel page on his site (”B1″), and his link ideally would come from “B2″ and link to “A2″.

3) Make sure that the links coming in are from sources that are overtly relevant to your content. So if your buddy links to your software blog from his own blog about designer neckwear, the above tactics will probably have a diluted effect.

The broad SEO view focuses, the roads converge, the #1 ranking is within reach.
(Photo by rcsaxon)

And just for good measure, it never hurts to reacquaint yourself with what worked in the past, including what happened without your knowledge. A quick breeze through Backlinkwatch ought to give you all the insight you can handle… and your path ahead will be crystal clear.

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Paul Burani
Clicksharp Marketing
New York, NY

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 @ 6:59 pm on the category Link building, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.


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