There was a time when reciprocal linking was a number one
priority among webmasters and SEO's for
obtaining a good search engine position, that time alas is
no longer with us.
This is in no small part because webmasters are no longer
dedicating as much time to link pages. Why
should they spend hours and hours getting link partners and
then making sure that their are linking
back to them when all they have to do is spend 5 minutes
joining a web ring or 20 minutes a day
updating their blog or rss feed.
More and more we are using other methods to get sites
linking to us, such as joining web rings, or on
placing keyword rich text ads placed on carefully selected
forums or interest sites. These bring us the
keyword relevancy weight we crave so much as well as
targeting the people who actually have an interest
in the product or idea we are marketing.
With the introduction of such tools as rss and blogs there
has come a change in the way we develop our
sites to obtain a good page rank and a hopefully a higher
rank with the engines. Gone are the pages and
pages of links to other people's websites and instead we use
the single page blog/feed. We are reaching
out to a different audience, an audience that wants to come
back to us day after day after day because
they have a similar interest to ours. With our blogs
potentially being fed to anyone who wants to read
it we can give our new customers / readers some useful
information as well as ensure a return visit
which could result in that elusive sale.
Updating our blogs is more enjoyable than chasing backlinks;
we are indulging in a pastime we have an
interest in and obtaining a good result for our site.
I still get hits for my older sites from link partners but
obtaining link partners for my new site is
increasingly difficult and to be honest I probably won't
chase this time consuming preoccupation with
getting return links ever again. If I can obtain more
visitors and ensure a regular visit from a search
bot as well as use my time reading and writing about a
subject that interests me then I will, won't
you?
My view is that reciprocal linking is dead.
Long live the blog.
For more information on rss you can go here.
For more information on blogging go here.
Mark White has worked in I.T. for the last 15 years and
currently runs 3 websites.
http://buy-dvds-online.com
http://sunspeks.com
http://tendollardownloads.com/
And administrates for http://freetraffictip.com/members