There are three main factions:
- Group 1: reciprocal links have no effect at all on the position of a website in the search results on Google.
- Group 2: reciprocal links work just like any other inbound links.
- Group 3: there's a threshold value. For example, you shouldn't have more than 33% reciprocal inbound links.
Which group is right and should you use reciprocal links with your website or not?
Is there a threshold value for reciprocal links?
Webmasters
in group 3 think that a high number of reciprocal links is a red flag
for search engines. The idea behind this is that links should not be
trusted if (for example) 100% of a site's inbound links are reciprocal.However,
this is not really a good indicator. If high quality websites do link
to each other, they won't harm their rankings in any way.
For some sites, it is normal to have a high reciprocity percentage
Link building expert Eric Ward recently did a test. He found out that there are websites for which it is perfectly normal that they have almost 100% reciprocal links.
The
more specific the topic of a website is, the more likely it is that it
will have a high reciprocity percentage. As an example, Eric Ward used
the website of "The Southeastern Bat Diversity Network", an
organization with a goal to "conserve bats and their habitats in
southeastern North America through collaborative research, education,
and management."The top sites in that subject are all
linked back and forth to all other websites that write about bats. This
is not surprising and it shows that a high number of reciprocal links
can also be a sign of high quality. It depends on the topic of the
website.If the websites were about different topics, then the reciprocal links would look suspicious.
Should you use reciprocal links for your website or not?
You
don't have to worry if a link is a reciprocal link or not. That does
not matter. Reciprocal links are neither good nor bad. They are just
links and it always depends on the individual link whether it is a good
link or a bad link.If a link comes from a website that
is related to your website then it is a good link. If the other website
is related to yours then you can link back and this won't cause any
problems. As long as you make sure that the links make sense to your
website visitors then everything is okay.
You can use IBP's link building tool
to get links to your website. IBP can help you with one-way links,
reciprocal links, links from blogs, links from related websites, links
from Internet directories and much more. It is a spam-free link
building tool that helps you to get high quality links.