Reciprocal linking?

Hi,

If I add a 'links' pag to my company website, and place links to other
websites in return to links from my website will it help me in search
engines?

thanks
Jon

On Tue, 21 Jun 2005 19:44:14 +0000 (UTC), Jon Culshaw <jon.culshaw@btinternet.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If I add a 'links' pag to my company website, and place links to other
> websites in return to links from my website will it help me in search
> engines?

Very minimally. The links will also be placed from trash "links
pages", which are not ranked as high as the real pages.

i

Jon Culshaw jon.culshaw@btinternet.com wrote in
<d99qmd$stk$1@nwrdmz03.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>:
> Hi,
>
> If I add a 'links' pag to my company website, and place links to other
> websites in return to links from my website will it help me in search
> engines?
>

Not really.

DON'T add a "links page". Place links to other sites in categories by
context and preferably alongside some relevant text and using relevant
link text.

The factors that will help your site in SEs are:

outbound links to sites that the SE sees as relevant and authoritative
outbound links that have keywords in the link text
pages that have a consistent subject
inbound links

A "links page" is liable to be treated by search engines as largely
irrelevant to the subject of your site. It won't do any harm as such, but
it really isn't an effective use of your time compared to developing
reciprocal links where your outbound link is placed within the context of
the page and the reciprocal inbound link comes from a relevant page on the
other site and has keywords in the link text.

--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"

"Jon Culshaw" <jon.culshaw@btinternet.com> wrote in news:d99qmd$stk$1
@nwrdmz03.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com:

> If I add a 'links' pag to my company website, and place links to other
> websites in return to links from my website will it help me in search
> engines?

It will for some. But you would do better if you learned to think like a
search engine. Google for example is very popular because it WANTS to give
searchers the best result for their search and its always changing its
rating formula to do it. Also it changes because people learn to cheat the
formula so it needs changed or Google would stop being popular.

Links are now part of the formula because if I have a golfing site and 20
other sites link to me then I might be a decent site about golf. But people
abused it so now Google tries to figure out if its 20 golfing sites that
are linking to me.

Anyway, instead of trying to force your way higher you would be better off
trying to become the site they want on top. Anything else is only going to
be temporary.

Gandalf Parker

In article <d99qmd$stk$1@nwrdmz03.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>,
"Jon Culshaw" <jon.culshaw@btinternet.com> wrote:

> If I add a 'links' pag to my company website, and place links to other
> websites in return to links from my website will it help me in search
> engines?

If there's any justice, it will help you rank lower rather than higher.
Any time to link away from your site, it implies you see the other site
as more valuable than your own in some way. A search engine should see
that and drop your ranking based on your own "advice". If another site
links to you, it should drop as well. All the non-whoring sites would
thus bubble up higher in the search results.

> All the non-whoring sites would
> thus bubble up higher in the search results.

As would all sites with absolutely no value at all which is the reason why
no-one links to them. Great idea - I can see you really thought this one
through.

In article <d9alsn$2pnc$1@bunyip2.cc.uq.edu.au>,
"Rastus" <nospam@uq.edu.au> wrote:

> > All the non-whoring sites would
> > thus bubble up higher in the search results.
>
> As would all sites with absolutely no value at all which is the reason why
> no-one links to them. Great idea - I can see you really thought this one
> through.

By what thought process did you conclude that sites with no value would
properly be included in results? Remind me to never use any search
engine you design.