With the latest Google and Yahoo updates I’ve heard many people say they think reciprocal linking is dead and it’s a waste of time to trade links now. I’ve even heard that it may be unsafe to trade links. I think differently.
Reciprocal linking may now have been devalued somewhat but that does not mean it is no longer valuable. When site A links to site B which has valuable content for site A’s visitors, how can this be a waste of time or unsafe? This has been a tried and true method for years for putting your visitor first.
Now for those who are trying to pander to the search engines first instead of their visitors, then, yes this may be trouble. There have been many linking schemes afloat for sometime that are intended to offer nothing to a website’s visitor and are intended to trick the search engines into inflating a websites SERP’s only. These, I believe are now being targeted.
Link farms, redirects to remote servers that carry false linking information, paid text links and a few other methods are most likely being targeted with the latest update. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water on this one and say that reciprocal linking is bad or has lost all value or is even unsafe.
Reciprocal linking is valuable and safe, if you just keep your visitors in mind every time you make a trade. Will you visitor find the site and the content on the site that you are linking to valuable? If you can answer yes, then link to it. One should never be afraid to put their visitors first.
