Up until several years ago numerous people spent ample of time creating and running reciprocal links directories. They worked well, for a while, and being involved with them could really improve your search engine ranking. However, you may have noticed that there are less requests hounding you now than several years ago and that is for a straightforward reason – reciprocal link building no longer works.

Does this mean that no building links works? First, let’s look at why reciprocal building links does not work. In short that answer is that as the owner of such a directory you create a pile of pages with little content and ample of links. It did not take the search engines long to identify the patterns of such pages and totally ignore their work.

However, reciprocal links are not the merely form of link building. Guest posting, article directories and loads more are still possible, several still using bulk submission techniques. Are these techniques worth while investing time and possibly cash in them?

Merely because the search engines devalue links directories does not mean that they devalue all links. People on the internet still recommend other websites, just not typically in huge link directories. So search engines following these more natural techniques would see the correct thing to do.

There is also a huge proliferation of reprinted material. People submit an article to a directory and that is picked up by other sites and reused. A blogger posts around something interesting and it is picked up by various syndication web sites and reused. What is the common theme to all of this duplicate content? There is a network of links pointing back to the original source.

These links allow search engines to unravel the duplicate content and to list the original website at the top of the search results. I’ve seen it happen and witnessed for myself that the original source does go to the top of the selection, right up to the point that someone steals the content and does not attribute it to the source. That is when the search engines become confused.

So this web of links shows where the content is sourced from and if everyone is reusing the content, the source must be good and useful. And if it is useful for real people to pick up and reuse, then that is a good indicator of quality to the search engines.

So we are back at the point of links telling the search engines about quality. So links may not work in reciprocal links sites, but they are still good when there are a couple of links built into pages of content.

If you want to know more about finding website visitors, call over to our website to learn more about targeted web traffic. There you will find load more ideas or you can read more about how to get more web traffic if you prefer to do it yourself!

Written by Keith Lunt

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