Modern Link Building; One Way Links

Back in the old days of seo (about 2-5 years ago) the best way to move up the rankings was with reciprocal link exchange. This method was simple as all you had to do is find a site that’s actively exchanging links, add a link to them on your site, email them asking for one back, and wait for them to do so. This way, both sites have a link, everyone’s happy.

However Google since Google clocked on to this, it has slowly been downgrading the worth of these reciprocal links and this is because the search engines are looking for pure, natural links.

If they detect a reciprocal link, they quite rightly assume that there has been a deal made between these sites to try and make themselves rank higher, which of course, isn’t natural.

The vision that the search engines have (especially Google) is that links should be accumulated selflessly, from simply being impressed with a site. For example, if a carpenter goes on holiday to Great Yarmouth, and ends up getting friendly with the owners of his hotel, and is generally overwhelmed by the great level of service and hospitality. He gets home and advises the visitors of his site to visit this hotel should they ever find themselves in Great Yarmouth and puts a link to the hotels site on his.

Of course the search engines were to be disappointed as this is not how they ended up working. Seo professionals popped up everywhere to manipulate the system. Reciprocal links worked well to begin with, but as one way links have become the most powerful kind of link you can get, SEO has become a more complex task.

Since the search engines began to realise what was happening, one way links have become the most powerful type of links to gather for your site. You will undoubtedly need at least triple the amount of reciprocal links to achieve top rankings than you would one way links, if indeed you can achieve top rankings at all with reciprocal links any more, and keeping in mind that you can only add a certain amount of links per month, it will also take at least triple the time.

Although one way links are harder to manage than reciprocals as you cant easily keep track of the link you’re receiving back (not in the same way as reciprocals anyway), they are the most powerful type of link to get your site ranked well. There are rumours that as soon as spring 2010 reciprocal links will be devalued to zero. I do not think that this is very likely as large business will want to exchange links in a fair way with their business partners and suppliers, and surely they should not be penalised for that.