What to Look for in a Quality Reciprocal Link Partner

Some say that reciprocal links have lost their value for search engine ranking. I don't agree. Let me explain how to find the best linking partners for your site. We'll start by building a list of potential partners, then fine tune that list.

How to Build a List of Potential Partners

Examine Links to Your Competitors

Finding ideal link partners is one of the most time consuming aspects of a link building campaign. Your strategy should be to find the best possible partners for the long term so focus on related, yet non-competing, websites.

What better place to start than with your competition? Use MarketLeap's Link Popularity Checker (www.marketleap.com/publinkpop) to scan through your competition sites; see who is linking to them as most likely they would also link to you. Ignore the links to the competition that are not related to your site theme and begin focus on those that are related. This is a great starting point and can eliminate a fair amount of searching.

Look for Partners Using Search Phrases

Next, seek partners within Google using the search phrases that you would like your site to be found under. Again, seek related yet non-competing sites for partnership. Ideally seek link partnerships with those sites that are showing up higher than yours in the search results for the desired keyword phrases. By seeking link partners in this manner you are essentially gaining somewhat of a free ride on the efforts of those now out-ranking you. This will generally boost your rankings within Google as well as increase the chances that you'll receive targeted traffic from the partner site.

But don't stop there. Keep looking for as many partners as possible from the first three to five pages of search results. Rankings change quite frequently, so sites on page three, four, or five could be on page one next week. Continue until you have exhausted your primary search phrases.

Scour the Open Directory Project (DMOZ)

Finally, add to your link partner list by visiting the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com), the largest human edited directory online. Google seems to give extra "points" to those sites listed within DMOZ. DMOZ is maintained by volunteer editors who are rather picky about which sites get in or are rejected. If your site is not listed go ahead and submit yourself. This is a great free link to have. If you aren't listed right away, don't keep resubmitting -- even though it can take months or years to be listed. If you add your site again, it kicks your previous entry out and your new submission goes to the bottom of the pile.

Now continue the link partner search within DMOZ. Seek directory categories that are similar yet non-competitive and continue building your potential link partner list. By the time you have gone through DMOZ you'll have more than an ample list of partners from which to choose and seek reciprocation.

Fine-Tuning Your Reciprocal Link Partner List

Now let's fine-tune your list. Quality starts with each partner site being related to the theme of your site. Links from them will provide your site with links from pages that are utilizing some (ideally, many) of the same keywords or key phrases. This will assist you in achieving top placement for those keywords and phrases. It will also help drive the kind of targeted traffic that tends to be pre-sold on buying what you have to offer.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)

Such theme-based linking is vital. Recent findings indicate that Google is moving away from PageRank toward the use of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). This technology uses close semantic matches to put your page into the correct topical context. Thus Google is now looking at the combination of the content of your site as well as those sites linking to you to assist in determining what your site is about.

As the search engines evolve, they make adjustments to their algorithms to weed out sites that are "spammy." An LSI adjustment of sorts began to be implemented in February 2004, in Google's major update of the year, turning search results on their head. This reinforces the importance of keeping partners related to your site focus.

Though it's never been a good idea to exchange links between unrelated sites, it's now becoming even more critical to avoid it. As LSI becomes more a factor with Google, the unrelated links are simply bleeding out the value of your site and will increase the possibility of it being tagged as a link farm, defeating your search engine marketing efforts.

Inbound vs. Outbound Links

To fine tune your list of potential linking partners, look at the number of inbound links compared to the number of links they have outbound to other sites. You can do this with a tool like Windrose Software's OptiLink. The best partners have more inbound than outbound links. If you do not have a tool like OptiLink then simply keep your focus on related themes and seek to get your link on a page with as few a links as possible; this will provide your site with the most benefit.

Google specifically states you should have less than 100 links on a page -- including includes links to your internal pages. We at LinkageXpress.com constantly recommend that you limit your partners or resources page with between 20 to 40 links on a page -- a better-safe-than-sorry approach. Limiting the number of links on a page will also attract partners to you, since your linking pages will look respectable rather than like a huge list of gratuitous links.

(Note: As you remove potential partners from your list during this fine tuning process, save them on a secondary partner list. You may still need them, since not all potential partners will link back to you.)

By now your list should be tight-niched in a way that will help your own site rankings. But you have also created a value rich resource for your site visitors. They will be glad you've taken the time to assemble related partners. They may even bookmark your site and return again.

Non-Reciprocal Links vs. Reciprocal Links

Ideally the best link to your site is a one-way linke from a related themed site, pointing to you without reciprocation. In order to get people to link to you without the need for reciprocation, however, your site has to provide valuable tips, tools, articles, resources, etc. that will motivate people want to link to you.

Unfortunately, most sites don't fall into this category. Therefore reciprocal linking is required. Reciprocal links are definitely good, so long as they are built properly. But are ultimately reciprocal links aren't as highly regarded by search engines as non-reciprocal links.

Done correctly, reciprocal link building can have long lasting and beneficial results for your site. Remember:

• Quality should always outweigh quantity.
• Your link partners need to be related to your site content.
• Partners should link to you from pages listing as few links as possible.

With this kind of link building strategy, you are well on your way to improved search engine placement, increased traffic, and sales.

John Gracey is a linking strategist with LinkageXpress.com and has been helping sites become properly and successfully linked for over five years. LinkageXpress is the effective human-driven solution to search engine safe link building.