Reciprocal Links

[MichaelHayes]

Going super dumb old school on this one, but hear me out...
Reciprocal links were one of the first things I learned about when I was introduced to SEO. I was taught that these links were devalued by Google/yada yada.
I never really tried these since I just assumed they were devalued, but *since* i've never tested it I have no idea.
In local services niches it seems like this could be an easy way to get relevant links. Anyone have experience with this that could speak to these links getting devalued?

 

[Ryuzaki]

They don't get devalued.

Even the "blogroll" sidebar links are powerful, where 30 bloggers all link sitewide to one another. I wouldn't exploit it. Anything over done will bring bad news with it.

But there are lots of ways to pull it off, even with direct competitors. Give them a link to a page that doesn't matter and demand one back to a page that does.

I'd say reciprocal links where it's A <--> B is going to be devalued in the sense that they aren't going to allow an infinite loop of iterations to boost page rank through the roof. But they are still valuable even then.

This was their tactic to stop directories from giving you free listings in exchange for a link, and Blogger Circuses and all that. Webrings, etc. Once that behavior stops, so does the devaluation.

Just like when new domain extensions come out at $0.99 each and spammers buy them up. Those are devalued for a while till the behavior extinguishes and then it's back to normal operations. Of course there are trust and authority thresholds to help combat this now too.

 

[MichaelHayes]

Thanks @Ryuzaki I will have to do some quick outreach. Would be interesting to see how effective this could be on a local level, perhaps I could cut back on the PBNs if it actually works.