After all, that is what the web is made of, links between documents that form a relationship between those documents and the sites they belong to.

Some will also tell you that the volume of links doesn't matter anymore. That you could have a million inbound links that are non-reciprocal and you could still be outranked by a new site with less links and content.

Again, while this can be shown in certain cases, in general, volume still counts.

Here's proof that linking is still valuable.

If you go to Google and search for miserable failure or just failure you will find the same page ranked at the top of the results - the bio page of current President George Bush, from the Whitehouse website.

Now, is this because Google thinks George Bush is in fact a failure? While some would argue the fact, it is in reality due to the volume of links from many different sites pointing to the bio page on the phrases 'failure' and 'miserable failure.'

This is a prime example of the value of bulk links. Most of these links are one way - true - but they aren't related to the Whitehouse or George Bush. They are mostly blogs and other site that perhaps have a bone to pick with the President.

But that doesn't change the fact that they all, in some form, link to the Presidential bio page on that phrase.

Need more proof? Try a search for click here. What is the number one site?

Adobe. And why is Adobe number 1? Because on every site that has PDFs they all say something like 'a PDF viewer is needed to view this document. Please Click Here to download Adobe's free PDF viewer.' Notice the link on the phrase 'Click Here.'

Again millions of links from unrelated sites.

Another thing - some people are saying that using the same link text on every single link is link spam and will get you banned. Well if that was the case, then Adobe should definitely not rank for 'Click Here' and the Presidential bio should definitely not rank for 'failure' yet they both continue to do so and have done so for years.

So why is it that in both of these cases the sites with millions of incoming links on the same phrase and from unrelated sites still rank highly? Is it possible that Jagger didn't really target reciprocal links or other 'link spam' as we thought?

Or maybe Google engineers just have a sense of humor and decided to leave the Presidential bio ranked as number one. Perhaps they are making their own political statement using Google.

While there is evidence that Google is getting much more choosy as to which links it will allow to point to your site, I believe there is opportunity to get creative in your linking.

That means that link building doesn't have to be as hard as some make it out to be. You CAN have links from unrelated sources and you ARE allowed a certain amount of the same anchor text from various sources. The difference is how those links are achieved.

While reciprocal linking may be dead, link building is alive and kicking. It, like all other SEO techniques, merely has to evolve to find the other remaining algorithmic loopholes out there.

While I still believe that building quality links from reputable related sources is the best idea in the long run, I think it's also safe to do some experimenting with other not-so-related sources. After all, you can't control who links to you in the end. The Whitehouse example above shows that.


Rob Sullivan
Head Organic Search Strategist
Enquiro Full Service Search Engine Marketing

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