Reciprocal Links, Good or Bad?

I've blogged a lot lately about the importance of getting inbound links to boost your web-based business. One way to do this is through the use of reciprocal links. A reciprocal link arrangement, in its simplest form, is one where Site A puts up a link to Site B with the understanding that Site B will also, in return, put up a link to Site A.

There's a lot of discussion in SEO circles about whether reciprocal link arrangements are still a wise thing to do. Many SEO professionals contend that reciprocal link arrangements have run their course and that search engines (such as Google) can easily detect such an arrangement. There is also speculation that Google has begun discounting them in its algorithm. Speculation being the key word, I have not seen any hard evidence that this is true - although the results of the most recent Google update are still being analyzed.

Considering that Google's primary guiding principle is to provide relevant results to its users, it is hard to believe that they would discount reciprocal links across-the-board. After all, what is wrong with two content related sites linking to each other? For example, one site sells PDA's and the other sells PDA accessories. In an arrangement like this, each site is providing additional value to its site visitors. So why would Google dishonor that?

I believe that the whole issue of relevance is a can of worms for Google, as well as the other search engines. The wormy question is: when are two sites relevant? I don't think anyone would disagree that the two sites in the above example are relevant to each other because they sell related products. A search engine algorithm could even detect this type of relevance by analyzing the placement and usage of the term "PDA" in each site.

But what about related sites? Suppose you have Site A which sells silk flowers. It has a reciprocal link arrangement with Site B which sells decorative glassware, including vases. These are two different product lines, but I don't think anyone would disagree that they are complimentary -- and therefore relevant to each other. But how can a search engine algorithm determine this type of relevance when there are no keywords in common? Hmmm, here is the can of worms. Unless the search engine can maintain a huge index of those types of relationships, it's going to have trouble. And I don't believe that such an index can reasonably be created and maintained because these types of relationships are so subjective and therefore, probably infinite.

Having said that however, I know that there is a lot of effort being poured into solving this problem at Google. And now that they are a public company, they might be content to define relevance in a way that would not be all-inclusive and exclude the relationships that can't be analyzed by an algorithm.

But as it stands now, I don't believe that reciprocal link arrangements are necessarily harmful to search engine rankings. Naturally, you will want to avoid linking to link farms and FFA (free-for-all) link sites. But if you really want to play it safe, focus on sites that are related. If you want to go out on a limb a bit, focus on sites that are complimentary. Until parameters are made clear by solid testing, a link on your site that provides some value to your visitor can't hurt.

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