Calis Beach and Fethiye Turkey Discussion Forum

Suggestions and Problems => Questions About/Problems using the board? => Topic started by: Nikos on March 22, 2006, 11:52:58 AM

Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Nikos on March 22, 2006, 11:52:58 AM
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
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Dippey on March 22, 2006, 12:47:56 PM
We're at number 28 in the charts!
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Nikos on March 22, 2006, 12:56:16 PM
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
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Scunner on March 22, 2006, 14:20:01 PM
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

Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Nikos on March 22, 2006, 14:41:06 PM
Great news, thanks.

Nick
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Steve (redding43) on March 22, 2006, 19:39:57 PM
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
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Nikos on March 23, 2006, 11:41:54 AM
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
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Steve (redding43) on March 23, 2006, 12:51:26 PM
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
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Nikos on March 23, 2006, 13:03:15 PM
We have the same job...and I think we're actually saying the same thing!

Cheers
Nick
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Steve (redding43) on March 23, 2006, 13:58:12 PM
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
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: tel on March 23, 2006, 15:52:10 PM
I think I am, so I must be.
Sorry to joke, it's great to know there are a couple of Techies on board as well As Scunner and Crabbit
Tel
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Crabbit on March 23, 2006, 19:54:05 PM
Contrary to popular belief, i don`t know anything about computers/the internet/spamming/hacking/phreaking or any other such technical things.
I have to call our local pc dealer to come to my house everytime i wish to boot up my puter.

Crabbit
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Scunner on March 24, 2006, 10:50:13 AM
It was me that told Crabbit to learn more about computers, when I saw his idea of booting one up was volleying his laptop out the window when it froze.

As for being a techie, thanks tel, but I know what I know, when I don't I have the generous help of others, not least Mr. Redding himself!

Scunner
Title: Reciprocal Links
Post by: Steve (redding43) on March 24, 2006, 11:55:16 AM
Creep!