Cooperative Reciprocal Linking Networks - A Critical Analysis

Every webmaster who has personally tried promoting his or her site understands in some sense the value of reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking refers to the agreement between website owners to mutually link to each others' sites in order to increase both exposure to each others' visitors as well as link popularity to search engines. Traditionally, this process has been very labor-intensive involving a number of steps to initiate contact, establish acceptable link parameters, and verify and police the reciprocal linking arrangement. Now, a controversial new linking tactic has emerged called "the cooperative reciprocal linking network."

The purpose of these reciprocal linking networks is ostensibly to utilize "unused advertising space available on the web." Here's how it works: the site owner puts a bit of code on each page of his or her site and it serves up hyper-linked text or graphic ads promoting the sites of other cooperative members. Each time a coded page is loaded, the ads change. This is much like how Google Adsense ads work except there is no correlation between the pages' topics and what ads are served--in other words, the ads are not contextual.

Although dynamically generated, these text ad links can be crawled by search engine spiders. In this sense, the ad linking network can be thought of as an automated method of reciprocal linking capable of providing a boost to each member site's link popularity.

Participation in the reciprocal linking network is generally free (hence the term "cooperative") and what one gets out of it depends on what one gives into it. If a webmaster agrees to display five ads per page and his or her site has 100 pages indexed by Google, then that webmaster's site is given a weight of, say, 500 (5 x 100). The higher one's "weight," the more often one's ads will show on other sites in the network. In order to be an eligible page, the page has to be indexed. The reciprocal linking network checks this using Google's application program interface or API.

So what's the controversy? Reciprocal linking network critics contend that because the links are crawl-able by search engine robots and the fact that ads may be irrelevant to the page's topic area, this is akin to having some sort of reciprocal link farm or scheme designed to influence the web page's link popularity and search engine ranking. Indeed, one well-known individual's web page showed up for a while in Google at No. 4 for the term, "eBay" purely because he designed his link ads so that the anchor texts had the word "eBay" in them. Carried across thousands of reciprocal linking participants in the network, it had automated the reciprocal linking process and, at the same time, boosted his page's link popularity for that particular term.

One would think that this is a bad thing from the search engines' perspective, right? Not quite. GoogleGuy, the unofficial Google spokesman who regularly posts to website marketing forums, responded to a thread at one forum on this topic. GoogleGuy said he was concerned about linking out to "bad neighborhood" participants in the network (like some Polish site that was apparently cloaking the cooperative ads). GoogleGuy did not say that the network was bad because it had the potential of manipulating rankings, rather he said the worry was "bad neighborhoods." So, does that mean that if the bad neighborhood problem was under control then the reciprocal linking networks are sanctioned? Maybe...

Here's how I look at these cooperative reciprocal linking networks: what if Google didn't exist? What if no search engine existed? What would I do to advertise my site? I would have to participate in reciprocal linking with other sites. But reciprocal linking willy-nilly would not cut it; it would have to be targeted, topic-based reciprocal linking. I would link reciprocally with other like sites. Would I participate in reciprocal linking networks if there were no search engines? Absolutely! It would greatly ease my reciprocal linking time. But the reciprocal linking networks are untargeted as they are currently configured--this is clearly something the operators need to address.

In conclusion, reciprocal linking via cooperative ad networks is a great idea. Google and the other search engines should not have any issues with them in concept. But concept is not reality; in reality, people are joining these networks and trading "weight" to influence link popularity and rankings in the search engines. So, it's not a perfect solution to the busy webmaster's reciprocal link management problems. Is participating in a reciprocal link network spamming the search engines? I don't believe so because the search engines have not clearly defined exactly everything that is or isn't a spamming technique, and in this business, whether a technique constitutes spamming or not often comes down to a question of degree.

(c) 2005 Philip Liu - All Rights Reserved Worldwide

Philip Liu is a freelance author and publisher currently based in New York City. Philip publishes regularly on his websites, Cell Phone News + Reviews (focusing on cell phone news, rumors and reviews from around the world), and DTVScoop - Plasma, LCD TV Reviews + News (focusing on digital television news and reviews).

---

Marketing Your Website Inexpensively

There are a number ways you can go about marketing... Read More

The Rewards Of Being A Good Consumer

Start building an interstate highway to your website. You're going... Read More

How to Build a Website that Get Free Traffic

How to get FREE traffic and vistors to your website... Read More

How to Draw Traffic to Your Website - More Steps

Web site traffic refers to the number of times your... Read More

Skyrocket Website Traffic With OPT

If you are looking for an immediate increase in your... Read More

Traffic Building - Understanding the Basics

So, you've spent hundreds of thousands on a state-of-the-art website.... Read More

How to Get Targeted Search Engine Traffic Quickly

Here's the "How-To-Do-It Guide" for driving search engine traffic right... Read More

How to Drive Traffic to Your Website with Traffic Exchanges

The number one problem new website owners have is, "How... Read More

3 Instant Traffic Techniques for Mini-Sites

When building websites there are two main options: large content... Read More

How to Exchange Links With Other Sites

As a result of search engine changes, linking with other... Read More

Traffic Generation: The Number One Skill That Will Generate Cash Flow (Part 1 of 3)

If you're feeling a bit of confusion and frustration about... Read More

Submitting Your Articles To E-zines and Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing DefinedIt is allowing others to giveaway and use... Read More

Proven Traffic Generating Techniques

What good is a website without traffic? A website without... Read More

How to Get More Traffic Than You Can Use

Traffic-generation is a hot topic for marketers. In particular, "free... Read More

Why Traffic Touts and List Pushers Are Bad For Your Business

In this Article we look at the second competitive advantage... Read More

How To Get Repeat Visitors To Your Site

When you have a website online it is important for... Read More

Online Guru or Scam Artist: How Can You Tell?

You want to start your own online business. You want... Read More

Top Ten Ways to Promote Your Website When the Traffic Dries Up

Even the best websites with the best marketing plans can... Read More

A Simple Guide to Analyzing All Those Web Traffic Ideas - Part 1

There will be a lot of people unhappy about what... Read More

Website Add-Ons That Can Catapult Your Web Traffic!

1. Add a message board to your web site. People... Read More

How to Develop Back Links

There are no hidden secrets on how to rank high... Read More

3 Fastest Ways To Get Traffic To Any Website

After all the debate over website design, shopping carts and... Read More

How To Generate Targeted Traffic...and Cash In On It.

We all know that generating traffic to your site is... Read More

You Dont Have TIME to Sit and Wonder When The Traffic Will Come!

There is so incredibly MUCH you can do to successfully... Read More

The Power of Link Popularity

Getting quality links to your site from related web resources... Read More

A Beginners Guide to Exchanging Links

Reciprocal linking is an effective, free way to get more... Read More

How To Drive Traffic To Your Website

How can you have effective results in major search engines?... Read More

Trafffic Equal Sales?

Everything being equal, more traffic to your website translates into... Read More

Reciprocal Linking

Ideally you don't want to be in the position of... Read More

Got Traffic?

Here's what your website must have to get lots of... Read More

Turn One-Time Hits Into Repeat Visitors

Every website owner faces the same challenge: How to get... Read More

Utilizing Award Sites for Your Benefit

Why Award Sites?Award sites are, in essence, directories that hand... Read More

To Create a Perpetual Traffic Generator

What runs through your mind when you hear that ezine... Read More