I am here today to dispel the myth of reciprocal links

[mattk]

Case Study.

Site: http://www.citychallengeuk.com

A well established company that provides team building events in cities around the UK and Europe.

Number of Links:
Google 36
Yahoo! 465
MSN Search 987
AltaVista 486
AlltheWeb 434

DMOZ.org Entry:
City Challenge
Business management game for team building, communications, and leadership skills. Complete event management is offered by Read Edge Events Ltd.
http://www.citychallengeuk.com/

Other Directories Listing:
City Challenge - Team Building Events
City Challenge UK, the Business Management Game: corporate development business management game to enhance team building, communications, co-operation, leadership and time-management skills for middle and senior management.
http://www.citychallengeuk.com

Does the site have a "links" page: Yes

What makes up that links page:

77 links in total.

10 links are hand picked and link to related sites.

8 links are to "highly regarded" sites, such as the BBC, Google etc.

41 links are requested reciprocal links.

18 links are reciprocal to directories.

So... how come this site, that only has 41 reciprocal links set up, is linked to by over 400 other sites???

The answer is DMOZ and other directory listings.

If you search for the complete DMOZ description for the site you get 2100 results on Google (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Business+management+game+for+team+building%2C +communications%2C+and+leadership+skills.+Complete +event+management+is+offered+by+Read+Edge+Events+L td.%22&meta=).

This suggests to me that DMOZ and other directories have fed into those 2100 other sites and generated the above result, as I can guarantee the site hasn't been hand submitted to each of them!

What does this tell me? It tells me that getting listed on DMOZ and other highly regarded sites/directories will generate far more links than reciprocal linking ever will. It also generates links that are of far higher quality than reciprocal linking ever will, as most of the links are one-way inbound links.

These are just some thought I have put together in a spare hour. Comments are more than welcome, in fact I genuinely encourage you to post your thoughts and feedback.

Cheers all!

[crus]

Hi Matt,

the thing is you can get a load of mystery links when dmoz is used for back fill on an CPC feed. Or if you advertise on adwords or the like the links will flourish and often hinder this type of saturation analysis.

Good point though!

D

[mattk]

I agree with what you say Crus. Firstly, this site doesn't use AdWords, so hopefully this will make the results cleaner. Secondly, the listing on DMOZ is pretty old and we no longer use that description to promote the site - this means that you can be pretty sure than any sites using that description got it from DMOZ or a DMOZ affiliate.

[JustOneUK]

There are 1000's of sites out there that take a direct feed off DMOZ, the only restriction being whether or not they 'scrape' the part of DMOZ where your site is listed. Some get better coverage than others. There is talk of these links being devalued but as far as I am aware it is yet to happen.

Although I am not sure what this thread has to do with reciprocal links :?:

[multilingual]

I think that reciprocal links are virtually irrelevant now when it comes to helping SERPS. The spiders are pretty sophisticated in detecting when links are back and forth between sites and they just cancel each other out. They seem to view this an an inorganic link structure and a way of trying to spam the system.

I put up a posting about this matter in November of last year and the general consensus was that reciprocals give very little return compared to a couple of years ago.

However, linking is still worthwhile, no doubt at all, so long as you get them coming in one way, which is why I continue to swap links with people so long as I can link back from a different site. Not read any evidence to show that linking in such a way will not help, especially if the sites have some relevance.

DMOZ is the Daddy when it comes to boosting a site, but after 2 years of waiting and pestering we are still no closer to getting listed on it. Anyone who knows a quick way to get listed, please tell me!

At the end of the day, we will all read information and do what we think is best for our site, but there will always be some really crap site that does everything wrong (according to SEO) and will still be above us in the listings.

The more perfect your site becomes for SEO, then the more obvious it becomes that you are manipulating things to gain a higher rank. There is software now that will give you a percentage rating for how well your site is optimised. Anyone with no interest in SEO may get a rating of 60% (ish) where as the clued-up sites will be well over 90%. The top sites are basically trying to spam the system.

Does anyone think that Google will not be able to rate your site in the same way? How will Google feel about such sites?

I believe (imho) that it will not be long before all the 'tuned up' sites will drop and the more clumsy ones who have no interest in SEO will become prominent.

:?

JB

[Ian J]

Dmoz is still a valuable resource as it does feed many smaller directories thus increasing the inbound links for anyone listed there but it does have it's downside as the DMOZ editor is supposed to work to a sort of template and you can end up with a very flat and boring site description.

That may not matter in terms of linking but Google and MSN are now using DMOZ site descriptions and in those cases where you have deliberately given the page a nice catchy meta description in order to catch the eye of the surfer, you may find that Google and MSN are listing your page with a flat boring description that won't make anyone want to click on the link.

I have two almost identical sites one of which is listed by MSN with the DMOZ description and the other with my own and despite being number one for the search term on MSN I hardly get anyone clicking through to the site.

DMOZ description used by Google & MSN - Invoice finance broker offering specialist advice including pitfalls to beware of

Google description for site not on DMOZ - factoring solutions uk - specialist factoring broker that knows most factors don't live up to their claims. They know which do

[Srivvy]

To be honest Ian J, I prefer the DMOZ description.

It sounds impartial and you have a more concise account of the site.

If I read a description, I dont want sales hype and I would be very surprised if greatly differing click through rates were due to these descriptions.