SEO Knowledge 2

The second in a series of SEO knowledge posts, this post is going to discuss reciprocal links.

What are they: You link to a site, and ask them to link back. If they do, these links are called reciprocal links.

Let's say that you are now reciprocal linking, hoping that because the site linking to you has a high PR, you will get a higher PR also. Used to be that way, but not anymore. PR is Google's measure of a pages importance, and hence the ranking of a page in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Thus, beside that fact that the links might bring some visitors from that site, your reciprocal link will not do you much good in terms of higher PR

However MSN and Yahoo! Search still count reciprocal links as 'backlinks,' and thus reciprocal links are still effective in raising your rank in those two SEs.

Remember, the most effective PageRank-and-SERP-rank-raiser is still the one-way link to your site, from a high PR site.