Three or four years ago a massive link trading campaign could

get your site to the top of the Search Engine Rankings (SERPs).

However, things are changing quickly concerning reciprocal

links. Companies like LinkAdage [ http://www.linkadage.com] are

receiving increased reports that reciprocal links are becoming a

less effective part of SEO. In fact, it now seems sites that go

overboard with reciprocal link campaigns are getting penalized

in the SERPs by having most of their reciprocal links

completely ignored by the search engines.

Adding to the problem are the Link Exchange Networks that are

popping up all over the web that put websites at risks

associated with being part of an artificial linking network.

Remember, any “link network scheme” is only as strong as its

weakest link. It is to your advantage to stay away from these

link exchange network schemes, programs, or clubs if you want

to keep the search engines happy. If your dead set on trading

links, do your trades one-on-one with other webmasters and not

through some multi-level like link trading scheme. Remember, if

you participate in an artificial link exchange network, one

slight algorithm adjustment can knock all the participating

sites out of the search index in one swoop.

Websites should have no more than 15% reciprocal or traded

links. The key ingredient to SEO linkage strategy is to make

your backlink structure look natural. Websites with huge

amounts of reciprocal backlinks and few one-way links are

clearly trying to game the search engines and today’s search

engines algorithms are smart enough to spot and penalize these

websites by potentially ignoring all of their reciprocal links.

If you have gone too far with your reciprocal linking program,

you are at risk of those links simply not being counted. This

makes it extremely important to only use reciprocal links in

moderation.

If you read any of the major search engine forums, you will see

lots of threads about established websites that have been top 10

in the SERPs for years, suddenly dropping to the top 100 without

making any changes. I have had the privilege of studying many of

the affected sites, and the common denominator seems to be an

over reliance on reciprocal linking programs. We believe that

reciprocal links that formally counted as “real” backlinks are

now being seen for what they are – links traded to game the

search engine algorithms. If a website passes the 20%

reciprocal link threshold, there is a very real danger that all

of its reciprocal links will be discounted. The effect of this

can be a disastrous drop in the SERPs. It seems many websites

that have thousands of reciprocal links suddenly are only being

credited for a handful of natural links they have accumulated

over the years.

So what can you do?

If your website currently ranks well but relies heavily on

reciprocal links to achieve its good rankings, now is the time

to start figuring out a strategy to increase your percentage of

one-way links to reciprocal links ratio. Here are a few simple

things you can do to achieve this goal:

** Offer something on your site that inspires other webmasters

to link to your website

** Write articles for content hungry sites in exchange for a

link to your website

** Eliminate any cross-linking between your own sites

** Delete some of your reciprocal links to garbage websites

** Delete reciprocal links to totally unrelated websites

** Delete any reciprocal links received though participation in

an artificial link network scheme.

** Start buying one-way links from related websites