ISEdb.COM

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.

A while back there was quite a bit of scare mongering going
around the SEO industry about how reciprocal links were dead. I had a potential
client once tell me that so-and-so-big-name-in-the-SEO-industry told them that
reciprocal links were dead. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it here again.
There is nothing wrong with reciprocal links. It’s all about how you
use/implement them that matters. No, reciprocal links are not dead and now I
have the proof.

Last year I decided to run my own test so I could refute
what I already knew to be true. Yeah, I know who cares about reciprocal links
now, right? The fear tactics have run their course and, frankly, nobody is
engaged in old-school mass reciprocal link swapping (for the love of God
people, if you’re still doing that, knock
it off!) But for the sake of science and posterity, I now, over a year later,
present the results of my (almost forgotten) reciprocal link test.

The
Set-Up

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

• 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

Link 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
Sting

I started out checking up on this daily seeing if Google,
Yahoo or MSN cached the pages linking out and then watching if/when they showed
up in the SERPs. The result was quite a roller coaster ride. One day the test
pages would be cached and the next day the cache date was from several days
prior. This happened frequently. The same thing with the SERPs. One day all the
test pages would show up and the next day gone and then the next day just some
of the test pages showed up and the next others, but not necessarily the ones
from the previous day. It was interesting to watch.

After about several weeks of daily monitoring I started to
cut back to every few days, then weekly then, well I kind of forgot about it
with the occasional thought “Hey, I wonder how that test is going”,
in which I’d take a quick look and forget all about it again. Here we are now,
over a year later and I think I can confidently display the results as
definitive.

The
Results

Note: These were the results as of Friday, July 12, 2007, I
notice that there has been some shifting in results since then, so your mileage
may vary.

Google
results

• Low
  authority, non reciprocating site
• Low
  authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)
• Low
  authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
• High
  authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
• Test
  page linking to #9 below
  
• Test
  page linking to #2 above
• Low
  authority, reciprocating site
  
• High
  authority, reciprocating site
  
• 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 site

Yahoo
Results

• Low
  authority, reciprocating site
• High
  authority, non-reciprocating site
• High
  authority, reciprocating site
• Test
  page linking to #8 below
• Test
  page linking to #2 above
• Low
  authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
• Low
  authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)
• High
  authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
• 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

• High
  authority, reciprocating site
• Test
  page linking to #10 below
• Test
  page linking to #1 above
• Low
  authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
• Low
  authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)
• Low
  authority, non reciprocating site
• High
  authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
• High
  authority, non-reciprocating site
• High
  authority, non-reciprocating site
• Low
  authority, reciprocating site

The
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 all you do is look for low-quality reciprocal links that ad no value to any
user’s experience then, yes, that can, and should do you some harm. But don’t
be afraid of reciprocation. If someone links to you out of kindness, feel free
to link back to them out of gratitude. It’s not going to hurt you one bit and
the link to you won’t be devalued. Just be sure you’re adding value, not
reciprocating for the sake of reciprocating.

So what do you think? Is this test conclusive or an exercise
in futility?