One Way Links vs. Reciprocal Linking

Benifits of One Way Linking Versus Reciprocal Linking.

If you want to feel the exhilaration after noticing one day that your rankings are on the rise, you will have to concentrate on one very important ranking criterion, your link popularity or page rank of your site. Arguably the most important ranking criteria for search engine rankings, most search engines - including Google - highly value a site's link popularity.

A basic concept for link popularity is that if your site is considered a valuabe resource by public web users, then your site will tend to receive random incoming links. Who's going to link to a site that just advertises over-priced products? If that same site offered tips on how to clean, restore or modify that product for free, then that site would be deemed as a valuable resource and would start receiving incoming links because of it. In determining web site tankings, search engines calculate the number of outgoing and incoming links to a web site, and weigh the number of each. Sites that contain more incoming non-reciprocal links will obtain higher rankings becuase it is assumed that due to more incoming links, that the web community considers the site to be a valuable resource. Search engines then also take into considerion the relevance of all web sites that are linked to each other for particular keywords.

Why is one-way direct linking more important than reciprocal linking? Webmasters have always found ways in the past to manipulate search engine results and are continually doing so to improve their ranking in search engines.

Over the years, Google and other search engines have advanced in their methods of detecting deceptive practices, and are now penalizing sites that employ search engine manipulation tactics. Reciprocal link popularity is currently the latest method of improving search engine rankings. However, acquiring quality links is a meticulous task. Many quality web sites link only to other sites which they feel will benefit their site visitors. In order to participate in reciprocal linking, these sites look for various features of your site. Such criteria can include: advice on specific content, articles, or tutorials. How popular is your product? How valuable is it to this specific targeted group of visitors? Hence, a site with quality non-reciprocal incoming links result in higher search engine results because search engines conclude that your information, products, or services are deemd valuable by other quality sites.

Please see my article on How to Choose The Right Keywords for more information on this topic.

Reciprocal linking is the new webmaster quick fix to achieve higher rankings without having to directly provide a quality site to the community. Of course, this will help your rankings if you can't achieve any direct one way links to your site on your own. If your site is not quite seen as a valuable resource to the web community, achieving your backwards links to your site through reciprocal linking may be your only option for now. Search engines may very well start to reject reciprocal linking in the future because this is it is seen as a superficial method of increasing link popularity. The only accurate procedure for search engines to analyze link popularity may simply be incoming links.

Exchanging links is not enough to improve link popularity. The task also involves locating one-way linking opportunities. A challenge is locating complimentary sites with high page ranks or PR that agree tp exchange links with your site. Sites with higher PRs - i.e. PR5 or 6 - are often afraid that lower PR ranking sites - PR 0 or 1 - will affect their search engine status. It is, then, important to wisely choose links that compliment both your's and their site.

The Search Engine Google, uses its Page Rank (PR) as a measure of the link popularity of a Website. To see the PR of a site, simply download the Google toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com PR, or page rank, of a site is valued from 0 to 10. Obviously, a higher number on the toolbar indicate a better ranking. A bar with a gray page rank can be due to a number a reasons: the site has not been indexed, has been dropped, or had violated webmaster guidelines and is now banned.

A great software application tool that makes managing link exchanges so much easier is provided by 123LinksManager. 123Linksmanger helps you identify unethical link partners that are hiding your links on their pages, validates links daily for reciprocation, has the ability to manage multiple domains and directories at once, manage one way, two way and three way link opportunities and more.

Please review my article on how to obtain one way non-reciprocal direct links for more information.