Reciprocal links are not dead. Weren't dead before. Aren't dead now. I know it and you know it. But for just a second let's pretend otherwise.

A while back there was quite a bit of scare mongering going around the SEO industry about how reciprocal links were dead. I had a potential client once tell me that so-and-so-big-name-in-the-SEO-industry told them that reciprocal links were dead. I've said this before and I'll say it here again. There is nothing wrong with reciprocal links. It's all about how you use/implement them that matters. No, reciprocal links are not dead and now I have the proof.

Last year I decided to run my own test so I could refute what I already knew to be true. Yeah, I know who cares about reciprocal links now, right? The fear tactics have run their course and, frankly, nobody is engaged in old-school mass reciprocal link swapping (for the love of God people, if you're still doing that, knock it off!) But for the sake of science and posterity, I now, over a year later, present the results of my (almost forgotten) reciprocal link test.

The Set-Up

On one of my sites I created a master testing page. From this page I linked to eight new pages created specifically for this test. Each of those pages contained a few paragraphs of content with the word "reciprocallinksarenotdead" linked to an external web site. The goal was to watch the search results to see what sites appeared in the SERPs for our test term.

For the sake of creating a good testing ground, we linked to four sites that linked back and four sites that didn't. From here we split things up even further by linking to two sites in each group to that we considered to be "high authority" for their industry, and two that we considered to be "lower authority" for their industry. We then split this again using one to link using the target site's keyword in the link and the other not. Got all that? No? OK, let me put it to you this way (the links below take you to the test pages):

Links to reciprocal linking sites

• Link to a low authority site using keyword
• Link to a low authority site
• Link to a high authority site using keyword
• Link to a high authority site

Link to non-reciprocal linking sites

• Link to a low authority site using keyword
• Link to a low authority site
• Link to a high authority site using keyword
• Link to a high authority site

The Sting

I started out checking up on this daily seeing if Google, Yahoo or MSN cached the pages linking out and then watching if/when they showed up in the SERPs. The result was quite a roller coaster ride. One day the test pages would be cached and the next day the cache date was from several days prior. This happened frequently. The same thing with the SERPs. One day all the test pages would show up and the next day gone and then the next day just some of the test pages showed up and the next others, but not necessarily the ones from the previous day. It was interesting to watch.

After about several weeks of daily monitoring I started to cut back to every few days, then weekly then, well I kind of forgot about it with the occasional thought "Hey, I wonder how that test is going", in which I'd take a quick look and forget all about it again. Here we are now, over a year later and I think I can confidently display the results as definitive.

The Results

Note: These were the results as of Friday, July 12, 2007, I notice that there has been some shifting in results since then, so your mileage may vary. Google results

1. Low authority, non reciprocating site
2. Low authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)
3. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
4. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
5. Test page linking to #9 below
6. Test page linking to #2 above
7. Low authority, reciprocating site
8. High authority, reciprocating site
9. High authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)

Google supplemental results show the remainder of the testing pages. Missing from SERPs: High authority, non-reciprocating site Yahoo Results

1. Low authority, reciprocating site
2. High authority, non-reciprocating site
3. High authority, reciprocating site
4. Test page linking to #8 below
5. Test page linking to #2 above
6. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
7. Low authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)
8. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
9. Link to a blog post that uses keyword as part of the URL

Missing from SERPs:

• Low authority, reciprocating site
• High authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)

MSN Results

1. High authority, reciprocating site
2. Test page linking to #10 below
3. Test page linking to #1 above
4. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
5. Low authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)
6. Low authority, non reciprocating site
7. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
8. High authority, non-reciprocating site
9. High authority, non-reciprocating site
10. Low authority, reciprocating site

The Happy Ending

We can conclude from that that, all things being equal, reciprocating links have no more or less value than one-way links. Yeah, I know, we all read Matt Cutt's post about how excessive reciprocal linking can hurt, and I'm sure Matt is right. But the key word there is "excessive". If all you do is look for low-quality reciprocal links that ad no value to any user's experience then, yes, that can, and should do you some harm. But don't be afraid of reciprocation. If someone links to you out of kindness, feel free to link back to them out of gratitude. It's not going to hurt you one bit and the link to you won't be devalued. Just be sure you're adding value, not reciprocating for the sake of reciprocating.

So what do you think? Is this test conclusive or an exercise in futility?

Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.

Yesterday, I linked to a post by Chris Winfield that offered up some advice on finding the best social bookmarking and social news sites for your small business. In the comments, a reader asked where they could find a list of social media sites. As it turns out, there's a great post over at Cornwall SEO that includes more than a dozen social media lists, ordered by how recently they were updated.

Some of the resources, like the one put together by Tropical SEO have been updated over time to add additional sites. The most recently published list, from Vandelay Design categorizes the sites by topic and invites readers to add their own suggestions in the comments.

Just keep in mind that each of these lists serves as a starting point for your journey. Just because a site is listed doesn't make it a good fit for your site. At the same time, there may be highly relevant sites that haven't made any of these lists yet.

I can hardly bring myself to say the old cliche about content being... well, you know. I think it's one of the original cliche's in the SEO industry. And as redundant as it has become, for whatever reason we keep hearing it over and over again. And every now and then a new studies pops up seemingly proving proving, once again, that content is... uh, good.

But much like a TV producer suggesting "video is king" or a radio advertiser demanding that "audio is king", so goes the SEO demanding the same about content. Content has its role--and an important one at that, but it's not the be-all, end-all of online marketing. Not even close.

But the roots of the "content is" movement are important for our industry. The mantra was first heard in the early days of the search engine optimization industry when SEOs were doing nothing more than throwing a bunch of keywords on a page and hoping they rank well. Little or no thought or consideration was given to the readability of the web page. After all, it's only rankings that mattered, right? But those of us who learned to game search engines slowly began to learn something that those in the marketing industry have known for years. Words sell. Or turn people off, depending on what's written and how it's written.

So the movement to developing good content--real content--was an important one for our industry. But to get there we had to have the content mantra beat into our head over and over (and over). We got it. We know.

The king is losing his grip on the kingdom

But like any worthy cause, we've reached a point where the mantra has been used and abused to the point where we use whatever we can find to prove once again that content is... y'know, that. Take a recent study by OPA and Nielsen//NetRatings that shows that Internet users are spending more time than ever on content bases websites.

Share of Time Spent Online
Commerce: 13.8%
Communications: 32.0%
Content: 49.6%
Search: 4.5%

That there seems to confirm what many have been saying for years. Content is... uh, great for web marketing. And I've seen a few posts around the blogosphere and forums using this data to make that connection. The problem is. It's not really there.

With the rise in popularity of blogs and social media sites it's no wonder that more people spend their time reading online than anything else. While time reading and gathering information online has increased, time spent shopping has actually decreased, down over 2% from a year before. But does that tell us anything about marketing online? No, not really.

We know people like information and we know they like to communicate. We also know people like to shop and online shopping has continued to increase year over year. All this study suggest is what we spend most of our time doing on the web. Well, true enough, I don't spend most of my time shopping.

Since when is it the goal of ecommerce sites to get people to spend a long time on their site? Isn't it more important to drive shoppers to the sale and get the conversion? Step 1: Get traffic. Step 2: Keep visitors engaged. Step 3: Close the sale. That's not necessarily a process that necessitates long periods of time spent on a site.

In no way do I want to diminish the importance of content on ecommerce websites. Having a database of information that helps visitors make their decision, helpful tutorials, etc. can improve your visitor's overall experience and keep them coming back to your site. But the goal of all of that is to lead people to the sale.

Community killed content and stole the throne

If I were to interpret this data I wouldn't necessarily come away thinking content is... so very important. What I would conclude, however is that we need to build websites that meet a number of users needs. Adding more content to your ecommerce site is not the magic bullet. What is, however, is creating a great user experience and providing just the right amount of information and customer engagement that shoppers need to get to the conversion goal. That can be done through a number of means.

Many online stores are already paving the way by opening the door to ratings and reviews. Others are doing that by creating blogs to disseminate important and relevant industry information along with tips and tutorials. Still others do that by creating an information database that can visitors frequent to gain additional insights.

I might suggest that the best ecommerce websites are not those that build content around their products but build a community around the product interest. By creating a place where shoppers can come and gain information, learn more about the products and discuss or share information with others and then make purchases as well, will do more for sales than simply creating a shopping website.

By building a community you not only sell more products but you build brand recognition and customer loyalty. And both of those are worth far more than a single one-off sell. So while content may not be dead (not by a long shot, really), there is a new king in the online marketing industry. Long live community. Long live the (new) king.

Marketing Sherpa recently released the second half of its two-part series on how to get your company listed on Wikipedia. This special report focuses on damage control and what you can do when incorrect information is added about your company.

SUMMARY: So, your company has an entry in Wikipedia. Congratulations, you're in the social elite. Now the real work begins: tracking what gets added. Errors can crop up at any time because just about anyone can edit a Wikipedia article.

What happens if someone adds factually incorrect information? Go fix it yourself, right? No. You may wind up with egg on your face and blasted by bloggers saying you've sugarcoated your entry. We've compiled a list of best practices for the proper approach. Plus, using Wikipedia properly to get links added to your site.
(Open access until September 18th)

Click to continue