Google Discounting Reciprocal Link Exchanges

A website owner is often nagged by a confusion about how to most effectively increase the link-based popularity of their website. Google, on their official blog has clarified how search engines treat link spamming to increase a site´s popularity. This confusion is mainly caused by the common belief that there are two ways for optimizing the link-based popularity of your website. Firstly through the meritocratic and long-term option of developing natural links. Secondly through the risky and short-term option of non-earned backlinks via link spamming tactics such as buying links.

In recent times Google has tremendously refined its link-weighting algorithms. According to Google, nowadays, undermining the PageRank algorithm is likely to result in the loss of the ability of link-selling sites to pass on reputation via links to other sites. Discounting non-earned links by search engines opened a new and wide field of tactics to build link-based popularity. This conventionally involves optimizing your content so that thematically-related or trusted websites link to you by choice. A more recent method is link baiting, which typically takes advantage of Web 2.0 social content websites.

Google blog gives examples of new method of generating links. By submitting a handcrafted article to a service such as Diggs. Another example is, to earn a reputation in a certain field by building an authority through services such as Y! Answers.

The focus of every website builder should be on the users and not on the search engines. The aim should be to create value for the users. One can direct natural backlinks by investing in sophistication of the content. This in turn will benefit the users and earn traffic for your site.

“To sum up, even though improved algorithms have promoted a transition away from paid or exchanged links towards earned organic links, there still seems to be some confusion within the market about what the most effective link strategy is,”says Google. Google further asserts, “ When taking advice from your SEO consultant, keep in mind that nowadays search engines reward sweat-of-the-brow work on content that bait natural links given by choice.”

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