Hi, Marshall and Gary here

Here at Small Business Internet Marketing, we are members or associates of quite a few different professional and accreditation bodies.  So we get to see a lot of communications and offers that flow around.

One that seems to be getting a lot of airtime in many organisations is the pushing of reciprocal links.  Inevitably, the message starts off with something like “Improve your Google ranking” and then goes onto to offer an exchange of reciprocal links.  Whilst we have nothing against reciprocal links as part of a well thought out internet strategy, we have a sneaking suspicion that most people do not quite understand how they work.

One of our earlier posts had a long and detailed explanation about the Google PageRank formula – see How Googles PageRank fits in. If you follow the maths, it is obvious that links from higher PageRank pages will definitely help with your web pages PageRank. 

But a couple of very important things seem to get overlooked in the rush for reciprocal links:

1. Google gives a PageRank to every web page.  So make sure that you get all your backlinks pointing at the page that you want to increase its ranking.  This may or may not be the Home page.  Often, you may want it to be a product or services or sales page.  You should know this before offering any reciprocal links.
2. Backlinks from web pages with a PageRank of 0 are nigh on useless in helping your PageRank.  Be careful, many times the Home page of the site backlinking to your site may have the good PageRank, but the backlink comes from another “Links” page with a PageRank of 0.
3. If you own a web page that has a decent PageRank, you only have so much “link juice” to use.  Use it wisely and don’t just use backlinks as a simple strategy – you will be giving away far more than you get most likely.  The more links out to other sites, the less worth your PageRank is to those sites.
4. The placement of a backlink is very important as well.  One link in a veritable sea of random links is not of much value – I am certain we have all seen the Links page with an amazingly eclectic range of links.  Google values “contextual” links far more highly, particualrly if the anchor text over the hyperlink is relevant to the page that it is on.

So, to paraphrase a well known saying, please beware of Greeks bearing links.

You need to have a clearly thought out link strategy that incorporates all these matters rather than a random asking of everyone to do reciprocal link with your website.  We use our useful links section sparingly here at Small Business Internet Marketing – and so should you.

Your business buddies

Marshall and Gary