Backlinks & Reciprocal Linking

It's a fact of life that, like it or not — reciprocal linking (also known as "backlinks") will help your search engine rankings. The biggest scramble is Google. Honestly speaking, this is the search engine that is the most important search engine to rank well in. That does not mean you should disregard the other popular engines like AOL, Yahoo, Hotbot, MSN and the rest of them as they definitely have a respectable impact as well. But the Big Kahoona is Google — and that's why everyone strives to get their attention.

Search engines make changes to their algorythms and requirements all the time. What's most important today may not be next week, next month or next year. Of course, they can't get work together to make it easy and all do things the same way! Oh no! Each one has their own requirements. It takes work and dedication to keep up with the latest and greatest methods! This is where having a good SEO Specialist working for you is to your benefit.

At this point in time (and definitely subject to change on no notice!) Google places quite a bit of emphasis on what's called related reciprocal linking. The keyword here being "related" and the most important aspect of this are the related backlinks to your site.

However, even better are plain old fashioned backlinks. This means that someone has your site link on their web site or in other terms — a link on their web site points to your site. Again, it's best that their site content is in the same category as yours. These have always been the best links and normally they happen when you have information on your site that another site likes and is relative so they voluntarily add a link to a page on your site. They don't have to contact you to do this. They just to it. You can consider it as an honor actually!

Unfortunately, you may not always like the site that links to yours. I had this happen to me once and actually tried to get them to remove my link. I wasn't successful. I haven't been able to find a law that governs this to date, so as far as I know there's no way to force another web site to remove your link. The best you can do is to hope that at least it's a respectable web site and not a site you wouldn't want your children or your Mother to visit! Not only will it not do much to boost your rankings, but it can be embarassing as well.

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The bottom line is this — if you really want to give your site and your business it's best shot at good rankings, you'll do what Google wants!

This doesn't mean you should scour the Internet for just any old site that will place a link to yours on theirs in exchange for their link on your site. No, no, I repeat — NO! This won't do you any good at all and in fact will eventually do more harm than good. But it does explain why although I have a brief list of reciprocal links, they've been carefully chosen, strategically placed and are one of the reasons I have excellent search engine rankings!

If you'd like to do the Recip-Link-Dance with my site, just let me know! I'll review your site and if it's a good fit - let's dance!