For a while we were led to believe that reciprocal linking will boost your site’s search engine ranking, especially when the site you are exchanging links with is very relevant, has a high PR, and is on the top search rankings itself.

Yes, it may have worked before, but now that trick is ineffective. Google it seems has refined its backlink algorithm. Now the authoritative search engine seems to prefer backlinks that are:

1) Found on highly relevant authority websites;

2) Located on pages with few other links as possible and within a homogeneous “neighborhood”; and

3) Placed on pages with rich content and high traffic.

Notice that I didn’t even mention Page Rank. The reason for this is that PR in my opinion is greatly overrated. It is good only for measuring how good a page is for leeching Page Rank from.

For the new rules on building links, it is better to find high quality authority sites that will link back to you. These sites will only do this if you have also quality valuable content that they think their users will appreciate the use of.

Aside from this it is also beneficial for you to check a website’s domain age because authority sites are often those known by almost everyone for a long time. Users view their content as trustworthy, reliable and accurate.

Authority sites often link to many websites with relevant content and these often rank high for the same group of keywords as the authority site. If you happen to use similar terms then it would be good for you to start negotiating backlinks from these other sites. Instead of looking at them as competition for the same keywords, use them as allies in boosting your site up in the rankings game.

Find good websites to request backlinks from by using the allintitle: search operator in Google. Type allintitle: and the search term you are targeting and you will be presented with a list of highly relevant webpages with the search terms found inside the Title element of each page.

Next, find the sites that link back to these webpages by using the link: search operator in Google. Take note of any website that commonly links to each of those pages.

Then find the contact information for this website by either searching WhoIs or by searching the name of the webmaster and contact email at the website’s FAQ, About Us or Contact Us pages.

The search may, however, take a lot of time to accomplish without a software program to help you out. If you do prefer doing it manually to better understand the process and to identify the various characteristics of selecting a site to ask a link from then feel free to follow the techniques outlined here.
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