Reciprocal Links

[Nikos]

If you add your home web page to your profile then it's common courtesy to add a reciprocal link on your web site back to the Calis Beach site.  The nature of a reciprocal link is one of mutual benefit - each site drives traffic to the other and each site gets an improved page ranking in search engines; as their link popularity is improved.  

Try this search:

http://tinyurl.com/gvgcp

Here are all the links back to the Calis Beach web site (you can do the same in Google but for some reason that Google alone knows, the results are not accurate).

Then try the same thing for your web site and you won't find the reciprocal link.

This is because as the Calis Beach forums are password protected, search engine crawlers and spiders can't actually access them to detect the reciprocal links.  

The link popularity benefit is therefore only one-way.

Most forums allow read-only access that does not require a login.  This way search engines crawlers can access the site unhindered, but users would still need to login to post.  I'm not sure whether this is possible with Snitz but if so, I would suggest that the access model be changed so that all our sites move up the rankings!

Nick

[Dippey]

We're at number 28 in the charts!

[Nikos]

Dippey, it's just because the search engines haven't got round to crawling your new site yet.  And they won't, unless you either register the site or set up a reciprocal link that's accessible to the search engines; which is my point.

BTW, I don't think those numbers are rankings of importance - your site showed 26 when I just looked, which suggest they might be random.

Nick

[Scunner]

The site became password protected recently after a small number of stupid activities by some 'new' members.

The reciprocal link benefits both sides, as you can advertise your website to all who care to look at your profile - that would be people with an interest enough in Calis to register. So it isn't a 'one way benefit'.

The link popularity suffers, as does the referrals from Google to this site - as stated the crawlers can no longer access the threads.

I will change it back to non-passworded access in the hope that people can be mature.

Scunner

[Nikos]

Great news, thanks.

Nick

[Steve (redding43)]

Google does not rate reciprocal linking as a way to boost ranking. Actually they are now moving against it and considering it more to be a form of Spam, due mainly to the number of Spam sites that simply list lots and lots of links in an effort to increase revenue for Affiliate marketing. Be very careful with this kind of linking and stick to just 1 or 2 links

Steve

[Nikos]

These rumours have been going for years (since 2003 to my knowledge) but as usual it's not that simple.  Google's page rank algorithm is complex but it certainly does place high score on the interpretation of links to your site.  Whether it ranks reciprocal links lower than one-way links is another matter, though.  Here's their official statement:

http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html

One thing they definitely don't like though is the use of link farms and cloaking techniques.  This is an interesting article:

http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2006/02/google_removes.html

Last year I promoted a web site for a large investment bank and despite employing every trick in the book, I couldn't budge it up Google's rankings (no problem with the other major search engines).  This was until I back linked from a site with a page rank of 7, then lo and behold, the next day my site was top 10 the rankings.

Make no mistake link popularity is still the primary way to move up Google's page rankings.  Whether it will be in the future is another matter.

Cheers
Nick

[Steve (redding43)]

Nick

probably one we can have a long and boring techie conversations off line but there are hard facts to my comments.

i am the Head of Internet for a Global Financial services company. Part of my role is to look at marketing of our websites. We have an open and face to face regular discussion with Google and the above comments are 'from the horses mouth' so to speak.

totally agree that Google have a habit of changing their algorithms on a regular basis but as at today (and confirmed by a phone call to them just now), multiple linking within a site is no longer highly regarded by Google

Fortunately it is things like this that keep people like me in a job!

Steve

[Nikos]

We have the same job...and I think we're actually saying the same thing!

Cheers
Nick

[Steve (redding43)]

I think we are. Just read one of your links in your post.

Basically the spamming happens on the site that has all the links. So if lots of sites are linking to yours then you will have a high ranking BUT those sites that link to yours, if they also link to lots of other sites, they may be blocked or downgraded by Google

(Nick, do you think we have confused enough people to justify our jobs!)

Steve