Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Where is the best place to put reciprocal links on our website?
-
Where should reciprocal links be placed on our website? Should we create a "Resources" page? Should the page be "hidden" from the public? I know there is a right answer out there! Thank you for your help!
Jay
-
Oops. I only just noticed the date on this question! Sorry folks...
-
Agreed. However, it might be worth adding that reciprocal links can also look natural but only if they form a small part of your link profile.
Whatever you do, Jay, dont add a page called links or resources. Make sure the links are contextual links in the content of article's or content.
My way around doing this is putting them in the testimonials pages on my sites
A good example would be when I managed to get a link from Sky.com - in return they requested a link back to their site and I would be silly not to have provided one. I didn't want the link for the juice, I wanted it for the click through's. The reason I'm saying this is to show that not all reciprocal links are seen as un-natural.
-
Good stuff....thank you for the awesome advice! I'll heed it.
-
Generally speaking, I would recommend that you do NOT copy these links from your competitor. The optimal way to use an analysis of a competitor's backlink profile is so you can copy the good links and leave the bad ones.
If you want to search your competitor's site for these links, you can try using the site: operator in Google, or perhaps the specific site's own search box.
There are forms of quality reciprocal links. They can be found on a "Resources" type of page on your site. If your site focuses on health topics you may link to the Mayo Clinic, the National Institute of Health, and other quality sites. The purpose of these links are to help your readers locate quality information. Some relevant sites may link to you as well and these links could be reciprocal which is fine.
If you have a "Resources" page where you provide links with perfect anchor text (i.e. "best real estate agent") to sites which are not relevant to yours, that is a rather obvious attempt to manipulate search engine rankings. The links you provide will offer little to no value, as well as the links you will receive. You need to give search engines a lot more credit. You are spending time and effort on what frankly amounts to bullsh*t SEO.
Investigate all your competitor's links. Look for their best links and investigate them. You want ideas, not to copy cat. The best you can do by copying your competitors is to eventually catch up to them. Provide better content, focus better keywords, be more current and relevant, be more authoritative and then you will gain links that a competitor can't copy...because the links you gain have to be earned.
-
While I generally agree with Alan above, if you're going to do recip links, I'd try to work them into the context of your site on different pages.
-
Hey Ryan. I found a bunch of links through the SEOMoz link tool analyzer that our competitors have. When I visited the link sources, all of them required a reciprocal link to be placed on our website. However, I notice that none of our competitors have a "public link page" where these reciprocals might be. Therein was my question... Jay
-
Can you share more details about these reciprocal links? What is the purpose of placing them on your site?
-
i would not get reciprocal links, Search engines look for un-natural patterns of linking, although they happan natrualy somtimes, SE's can see not only your pattern but those you have reciprocal links with.
But having said that, you are on the right track, link out on a page with low PR, include a load of links back to your own site so that you only give away a small percenatge of link juice.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to prevent development website subdomain from being indexed?
Hello awesome MOZ Community! Our development team uses a sub-domain "dev.example.com" for our SEO clients' websites. This allows changes to be made to the dev site (U/X changes, forms testing, etc.) for client approval and testing. An embarrassing discovery was made. Naturally, when you run a "site:example.com" the "dev.example.com" is being indexed. We don't want our clients websites to get penalized or lose killer SERPs because of duplicate content. The solution that is being implemented is to edit the robots.txt file and block the dev site from being indexed by search engines. My questions is, does anyone in the MOZ Community disagree with this solution? Can you recommend another solution? Would you advise against using the sub-domain "dev." for live and ongoing development websites? Thanks!
Web Design | | SproutDigital0 -
Is The HREF Link "Title" Tag Needed on Mobile Websites?
Hello To Those Who Are Wiser Than I, I am wondering if the href link "title" tag is needed, or serves any purpose, on mobile websites? Also, does it effect SEO in any way? I ask because generally the href link title tag provides more information to the user when they scroll their mouse over the link - but this action does not happen on mobile! Users have no mouse and thus no extra information would be displayed. I'm really wondering if it still matters for SEO purposes on mobile though. -The UnEnlightened
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
Best practice for multilanguage website ( PHP feature based on Browser or Geolocalisation)
Hi Moz Experts I would like to know what does it the best practice for multilanguage website for the default language ? There are several PHP features to help users to get the right language when they come from SEO and direct; present the default language by browser language, by gelolocalisation, etc. However, which one is the most appropriate for Quebec company that try to get outside Canada ? PRO and CONS. Thank you in advance.
Web Design | | johncurlee0 -
Lots of Listing Pages with Thin Content on Real Estate Web Site-Best to Set them to No-Index?
Greetings Moz Community: As a commercial real estate broker in Manhattan I run a web site with over 600 pages. Basically the pages are organized in the following categories: 1. Neighborhoods (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods/midtown-manhattan) 25 PAGES Low bounce rate 2. Types of Space (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/loft-space)
Web Design | | Kingalan1
15 PAGES Low bounce rate. 3. Blog (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/how-long-does-leasing-process-take
30 PAGES Medium/high bounce rate 4. Services (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/brokerage-services/relocate-to-new-office-space) High bounce rate
3 PAGES 5. About Us (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/about-us/what-we-do
4 PAGES High bounce rate 6. Listings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf)
300 PAGES High bounce rate (65%), thin content 7. Buildings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/928-broadway
300 PAGES Very high bounce rate (exceeding 75%) Most of the listing pages do not have more than 100 words. My SEO firm is advising me to set them "No-Index, Follow". They believe the thin content could be hurting me. Is this an acceptable strategy? I am concerned that when Google detects 300 pages set to "No-Follow" they could interpret this as the site seeking to hide something and penalize us. Also, the building pages have a low click thru rate. Would it make sense to set them to "No-Follow" as well? Basically, would it increase authority in Google's eyes if we set pages that have thin content and/or low click thru rates to "No-Follow"? Any harm in doing this for about half the pages on the site? I might add that while I don't suffer from any manual penalty volume has gone down substantially in the last month. We upgraded the site in early June and somehow 175 pages were submitted to Google that should not have been indexed. A removal request has been made for those pages. Prior to that we were hit by Panda in April 2012 with search volume dropping from about 7,000 per month to 3,000 per month. Volume had increased back to 4,500 by April this year only to start tanking again. It was down to 3,600 in June. About 30 toxic links were removed in late April and a disavow file was submitted with Google in late April for removal of links from 80 toxic domains. Thanks in advance for your responses!! Alan0 -
How can a Pincode finder website be SEO optimised?
Guys, I wanted to build a simple Pincode finder website for India. The targeted visitors as is obvious will be from India. Alike other Pincode finder websites, the users in this case too will have to key in the location / area of whose pincode he is looking for and they will get Pincode from that very location / area. Other than this, users will also come to this website when they search for something like " <location name="">pincode</location>" on Google (for instance, users will search for something like "Hiranandani Gardens Powai Pincode") Along with data fethced from our sources via Indian postal departments and other data available in public domain, we shall be using data from Google Maps API too. My question in regards to the same is as follows: What should the page-structure / structure of the website be for ranking well on Google? What should be the URL structure? Other suggestions to rank well on Google in this regards? Competition: (You can search for the term "Hiranandani Gardens Powai Pincode" to know how these sites show data) http://www.getpincode.info http://www.pincode.net.in Pls. help...
Web Design | | ShalinTJ0 -
Website title next to a post title-how to remove it?
I just have checked on some of the keyword I am ranking for and found in the serp that next to the post I have also the site name. But I thought that I have remove it. Does somebody know how to remove it? perhaps I did not do it correctly. I am also using yoast seo plugin but I do not have it set there to show the site name after posts name. Can somebody help me to fix this please? I have also attached an image from the serp where is behind the post title also Villas Diani-the site name Thank you very much! Iris O1oj4W0.jpg
Web Design | | Rebeca10 -
Can external links in a menu attract a penalty?
We have some instances of external links (i.e. pointing to another domain) in site menus. Although there are legitimate reasons (e.g. linking to a news archive kept on a separate domain) I understand this can be considered bad from a usability perspective. This begs the question - is this bad for SEO? With the recent panda changes we've seen certain issues which were previously "only" about usability attract SEO penalties, but I can't find any references to this example. Anyone have thoughts / experience?
Web Design | | SOS_Children0 -
Over Optimization & Footer Links for Crediting Web Design to a Company
With the recent updates to the algorithm having to do with link networks and over optimization it has got me to thinking about the footer links we add to each site that we build and do web design for linking back to ours. I could certainly see how Google could make the assumption that these are all on the same server, pointing back to one main site, and penalize us for that. Should we no=follow these links? They may say something like, "Website Designed By: Company Name". They do provide a valuable source to some extent of traffic to the site from people interested in our designs. Any thoughts?
Web Design | | JoshGill270