Reciprocal Linking Test
Why test this?
Ok so why test to see if reciprocal linking is benneficial, nuetral or detrimental to search engine rankings? Well this is / was a heavily debated subject and someone heavily disagreed with me so I decided to put it to the test. There is a thread on SEO Chat with running commentry about this test. Read the SEO Chat Reciprocal Linking thread here.
There has been much written and debated about the effectiveness of reciprocal links. For more of an insight have a look at these results on Reciprocal Linking from the IGREP technology search engine.
The Theory
Thats the background out of the way. So why do I think that reciprocal linking might be detremental or non benneficial to search rankings? After all we know that link popularity is one of the most important fact, its one of the SEO Basics. Well its all about natural linking patterns. Google knows all to well that we know link populairty is a big factor in rankings so we are going to try any thing we cna to get our hands on some links. This is why people recipricate links. Its the you scratch my back and I will scratch yours mentality. Webmasters that otherwise would not normally link to each other do so because they get a link back. This is however very transparent. Google can se that whilst site A is link to site B that site B is also linking to site A. This is easy to spot and also easy to nullify the bennefit. I believe this is exactly what they do!
The Test
Ok so how do I intend to test this? Well I wanted to be very scinetific about this. There could not be any variables that could be left to chance which could unfairly influsnece the results. This ruled out using existing sites that I had. Luckily I had just registered several domain names with high commercial value for a future event which were not indexed, all had very similar domain names and were all registered on the same day. So they were perfect for this test, they are all even at this point. I decided to impose some rules and conditions to keep the testing fair, these were
- All Sites Registered on the same day
- All sites submitted to Google.co.uk on the same day
- All sites on the same IP
- All sites to have the same number of one way links (except site 4)
- All sites have exactly the same hosting package.
- None of the sites will be linked together.
- URLs will not be released until the testing is finished so no unfair advantage can be given to any site
The 4 test sites are linked to in the following manner
- 1 Way Links Only
- 1 Way Links and Relevant Reciprocal Links
- 1 Way Links and ANY reciprocal Links
- Reciprocal Links Only
Recorded Data
I have a spread sheet (to be displayed soon) that records the indexing pattern of the sites, a section for sandbox duration and then frequently checked results and parameters such as PR, SERP position, links, number of results etc.
The test is still in its early stages but has uncovered some very useful and interesting information already!