Do reciprocal links hurt?

[Big Mountain]

Do reciprocal links hurt? I have found it very difficult to get reciprocal links compared to when I had a site back in 2004. Are search engines, specifically google, penalizing reciprocal links?

[cEejay_01]

If the sites you've linked to were not relevant and related to your site,.
If you applied excessive linking
If you linked to link farm or bad neighboorhood

[bogs]

you nailed all of it cEejay ... you might also want to consider this: http://www.google.com/support/webmas...n&answer=66356

[Qurratulain]

Reciprocal links do not hurt, if they qualify relevancy. It's, however, good to have more one way links than that of reciprocal ones. One way links are much appreciated by SEs, especially Google

[mit]

Absolutely not unless it is from a banned site or Link Farms.

Try to reciprocate links with only relevant and quality websites.

[Hafsoh]

If the links are reciprocal and relevant to you it won't hurt, few reciprocal links are fine...

[Bogart]

Google lists 'excessive' reciprocal linking in its Webmaster Guidlines as link spam

Reciprocal linking done in moderation shouldn't hurt you.

[temyong]

Why don't you try to read Goolge link scheme. google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

[Bogart]

Originally Posted by temyong

Why don't you try to read Goolge link scheme. google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

Thanks.

Google has defined Link Schemes in black & white

http://google.com/support/webmasters...n&answer=66356

[searchbliss]

Originally Posted by cEejay_01

If the sites you've linked to were not relevant and related to your site,.
If you applied excessive linking
If you linked to link farm or bad neighboorhood

You said it all.

[corlock]

it does when its totally unrelated...

[coolguy27]

It depends if your LE is non-relevant and done in excessive. That's it.

Google didn't say that reciprocal linking is bad, but bad if done in excessive way and trying to manipulate the link juices....

[MrCat]

Originally Posted by coolguy27

It depends if your LE is non-relevant and done in excessive. That's it.

Google didn't say that reciprocal linking is bad, but bad if done in excessive way and trying to manipulate the link juices....

Agreed!

But not just for manipulating PR, link exchanges that manipulate SERP are frowned at by google as well..

[arturobraganza]

excessive link building and links that can manipulate PR may hurt

[seoboost]

Reciprical links are what every site needs as long as they are related to your site and also try to make them natural.

[kevalin]

Originally Posted by cEejay_01

If the sites you've linked to were not relevant and related to your site,.
If you applied excessive linking
If you linked to link farm or bad neighboorhood

These are the only times I have seen Reciprocal linking getting punished.

The main goal for any website is become an authority hub. So reciprocal is a nice start for a website. But it looks better to search engines to have one way links to your website, from multiple websites.

[scipilot]

Google lists 'excessive' reciprocal linking in its Webmaster Guidlines as link spam

I'm not really sure about these answers, take the Virtual Library vlib.org for example, front page has a PR8 with PR7 on most inner pages. EVERY one of the sites listed (mine included) MUST put a reciprocol link back to ther VL as a condition of being listed.

The VL is the oldest catalogue of the Web, started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of HTML and of the Web itself, in 1991 at CERN in Geneva. Its PR has never been hit and I guess you cant get much bigger reciprocol listing than that.

[x3mario]

Originally Posted by Big Mountain

Do reciprocal links hurt? I have found it very difficult to get reciprocal links compared to when I had a site back in 2004. Are search engines, specifically google, penalizing reciprocal links?

Reciprocal link can only hurt your site if it is not related to yours and excessive linking will lead your site to get penalize.

[temyong]

Originally Posted by Bogart

Thanks.

Google has defined Link Schemes in black & white

http://google.com/support/webmasters...n&answer=66356

Ooooopsss, I did not notice that any ways you must follow that scheme.

[Matt-D]

They won't hurt you unless you're trading lots of links with rubbish sites. As with everything SEO, if you can argue that there's some benefit to Joe Normal by you setting up that link exchange, you should be okay. Whether it'll help at all is another matter.