Search engine watch has an interesting post about reciprocal links called “are reciprocal links dead?”.   The answer, it seems, is a resounding no, but beware…  For instance, check out this excellent post by Ian Mcanerin (here is his website in case you are interested:  www.mcanerin.com): 

I’ve had a client that had put up reciprocal links pages and used automated scripts to add and check them. They did this because their rankings were not very high and they hoped it would improve by doing this. It did - for a short while, and not very much. Then important internal pages started not showing up for searches they used to. When I took over, I did the following:

1. Went through the list of recips for people who had stopped linking to my client.
This is very common - agree to a recip, then a few months later, remove your link (or no-follow or javascript it), giving you a one-way from your victim. Like most tactics used by spammers and assorted nasties, it’s a numbers game, some people check back, others forget about it or trust them. You can usually assume that a site doing this either is or will be in a bad neighbourhood, and you do not wish to be linking to them for any reason. Not to mention I’m constitutionally unwilling to allow cheaters to take advantage of me or my clients on principle.

2. Went through the remainder and removed off-topic and unwanted links.
I’m generally fairly easy about what’s on-topic or not, but this removed about 600(!) links.

3. Ran a PR checker on the remainder
I kept most of the high PR ones and manually checked the low or no PR ones. I kept several of these because they were either good sites that were on their way to having higher PR or they were just plain useful or very much on-topic (measuring by PR doesn’t take into consideration that MSN, Ask and Yahoo don’t use it - never decide only on PR for anything). I also removed one very high PR site that has obviously been buying it’s way there and wasn’t going to last long.

4. Then I removed the automatic software and put the links in a proper, organized format.

This process lowered the number of reciprocal links from more than 1200 to less than 50. The results were:

1. Absolutely no loss of displayed PR
2. An increase in rankings for almost every page of the site, including the ones that had been losing their rankings earlier.
3. A lot less stress and worry…

Reciprocal links can help you - but you need to choose the right ones. Be picky. If you find yourself trying to hide some links because your are embarrassed, then why the heck are they on your site in the first place? Reciprocal links can also hurt you. I have a lot of evidence to show this, as well. So whoever advised you [Ian was responding to an earlier question in the forum] was right about the possibility of harm, but wrong in their understanding of what is actually going on. Links don’t hurt you - connections to bad sites do (this is not always a link, reciprocal or otherwise). Likewise, connections to good sites can help (though if you think that linking to a few good sites will somehow fix a bad site, you are wrong).

As a follow up, Ian notes:

There is a reason why I removed the automatic software last - this particular system automatically checked to see if you were reciprocating and if you removed a link through the system, the other link was automatically removed. If you removed it manually, it did not….When I said I removed the links, I actually meant I stopped the reciprocal relationships.

In other words, the improvements in this sites rankings are most likely not do to the fact that Ian dramatically increased the number of 1 way, in-coming links by suddenly and secretly no longer linking to this sites linking partners.

So, it looks like reciprocal linking is a bit of a mine-field.  If you know how to navigate it then it can help get you where you want to get going, but if you don’t, then look out… In other words, reciprocal links aren’t dead, but they can be deadly, if you don’t know what you are doing.

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For those of you who don’t yet know, Wordtracker has made some nice improvements to their product recently. In particular, I am refering to the new Keyword Researcher Tool which is a pleasure to use. I personally use it constantly and very much like how easy it is to use. What’s more, my understanding is that this is just the beginning, and that they plan to keep improving this tool. Also, I know from personal experience that they appreciate customer feedback. You can leave such feedback on their blog (http://www.wordtracker.com/blog/) or through the feedback form (just click on the feeedback button on the upper right hand column of the keyword research tool).

Also, on the blog are some posts which are dedicated to explaining how to best use the tool. Here are the relevant links:

What’s new about Keyword Researcher
How to perform a comprehensive search with the new Keyword Researcher Tool
How to use the select by keyword feature

Finally, while we are on the topic of Wordtracker, here are a couple of helpful videos which relate to how to use Wordtracker to help you find related keyword terms and phrases. I’ll let the videos explain better what I mean. The first video is by John Alexander and is the shorter of the two. The second video by Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon is not about Wordtracker per se, but has a nice section which discusses the same issue that John discusses (the section begins about 11 minutes into the video). Each video explains elements that the other doesn’t and work well, I think, as a pair. Check them out!

So, there you go, an updated Keyword tool and a couple of helpful videos. All that’s left now is to go out and actually use Wordtracker!

One of the basic principles of running a successful business (online or off) is knowing what your customers want.  The better you are able to meet your customers needs, the happier your customers will be.  However, it will be rather hard to meet those needs if you don’t know what they are in the first place.  The obvious question is how do you determine your customers needs.  Well, one simple way is to ask them.  What’s more, if you have a website then you have numerous avenues available to you to talk to your customers.  Each of them should be utilized to help you better determine your customers wants and needs.  Here, then, is a short lists of what you can do to talk to your customers online:

1. Create a feedback button and form
   This is perhaps the easiest way to get feedback from your customers.  Simply add an easy to read and see button which says “Feedback” on your site and have it link to a feedback form.  If you want you can ask particular questions, or merely have a text-form where your customers can share their ideas and thoughts about your site.

2. Create a special forum for customer feedback
   While a forum is harder to run than a feedback section, it has numerous advantages.  For instance, it lends itself to group conversation amongst your customers.  This discussion can help your customers to think of and share ideas that they might not come up with if someone else didn’t get the ball rolling.  Also, it allows for you to directly engage your customers in the issues that most directly affect them.  You can ask them to clarify their ideas and see what they think about potential solutions.  Note, by the way, that you don’t necessary have to create a forum revolving solely around customer feedback.  You can simply add a section to your existing forum for customer feedback.

3. Use your newsletter to encourage feedbackIf you send out a newsletter then dedicate an issue (or a section of an issue) to asking your customers to send in their feedback.  You may be surprised how may customers are willing to offer you valuable advice if you simply ask for it.

4. Use your blog to engage your customersA blog can be an excellent vehicle for eliciting customer feedback.  For starters, you can simply ask for their feedback.  You can then use their feedback as the subject of future posts and note the comments and responses to the ideas mentioned.  Furthermore, a blog can also be a testing ground for new products or services.  Talk about what products or services you are thinking of offering and note the response.

There are, of course, other means of discovering what your customers want (online polls, web stats, etc.).  I have merely listed those means which provide the most direct interaction with ones customers.  Direct contact with your customers is crucial for success and as such you should constantly strive to find new and better ways to get there direct feedback. 

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SEOMoz has an excellent piece about sending out links requests (something he argues is still of value). He has a 4 step process which he delineates here. Below are two comments of his that I found particularly intersting:

1st comment:

…The best way to determine a link’s value is to see where the page/site ranks at Google in general. If the site’s pages are consistently ranking in the top 3-5 results for the target terms, you’ve struck gold. If it ranks consistently in results 6-20, it’s still carrying a lot of value. If the rankings are highly sporadic and you only find a few relevant pages that rank in the top 20, the value is lower…One big mistake early link builders make is determining a link’s value based on PageRank. I think it’s a grievous error, as you’ll be highly over-valuing older sites and, in many cases, overlooking pages that rank well, which to me is the single best indicator of value…

This seems like a much more solid way of determining a links value than merely looking at the PageRank.

2nd comment

…you have to look at the site/page you’re requesting a link from and ask yourself this question — if I owned that site, what content on my site (the site you’re link building for) would entice me to link to it? …If the page is a directory or takes paid submissions or is linking directly to several of your competitors’ homepages, they’re likely to link to you without any special content considerations. If the site’s a research or informational site, you’ll need to have a resource that provides value to their readers. Oftentimes, a tool, multimedia piece or collection of data/research unavailable elsewhere will be the key. If you’re dealing with a direct (or indirect) competitor or a commercial entity in the space, a compelling piece of content may need to be accompanied by a reciprocal link (if you’re willing to go that route). Although reciprocal link building as a strategy is well past its prime, in a one-to-one link building campaign, it can be extremely valuable and won’t hurt you if you’re doing it infrequently. If the site is a government, non-profit or educational site, content that looks and feels non-commercial can really help, as can linkbait-style content that delivers value to visitors without requiring payment/registration. In some cases, there’s almost no content you can provide that will satisfy the requirements of a picky site owner, at which point, money enters the equation (if it hasn’t already).

I like it, tailoring the content to the link. It has the nice side benefit of diversifying your content and thus diversifying your appeal.