One-Way, Non-Reciprocal Link Building

One-way link building is a form of link exchange where your site receives links from other sites without you linking back to them. This is considered to be more effective than reciprocal link building and generally involves services that are specialized in one-way link exchanges.

A few years ago few people exchanged links. Now virtually everyone is doing it, because they have been told they need to get other sites to link to theirs in order to get higher search engine rankings.

Why non-reciprocal link building?

Google and other major SE's generally rank web pages with incoming links higher than those without. The whole Google PageRank system works on the principle that a link to a web page is a "vote" for that page. Basically, this is a good idea, but sadly the system has been abused with web sites "voting" for each other for the wrong reasons. They are either not related in the slightest or just exchange links to gain popularity and not because they want to complement their content for the benefit of the visitor. This defeats the purpose of search engines, as they exist to help searchers find what they are looking for. For example, if you are looking for games on a casino site you would not expect to find all sorts of references to topics that are totally unrelated to your search.

We believe that webmasters should link to content because it adds value to their site, not solely to improve rankings.

Search engines are constantly evolving and improving their algorithms to stay abreast of changes. When you set up a reciprocal link they are smart enough to recognise the reciprocity of your exchange and look upon it less favourably, adding not as much value to the relevance of search results than they would if somebody just pointed to your site simply because they like it.

Think of it that way. Which scenario looks more genuine? A recommendation where the person receives a payback in form of back links or one where they don't. A web site that a lot of people want to link to volontarily must be popular and deserves to be concidered as being more relevant than others, it just seems natural and fair.

Search engines see it as two friends helping each other out to rank higher. Even if this might not always be the case, but in case of doubt it's only fair to favour sites with "genuine" one way links pointing to them over sites that mainly have set up reciprocal links pointing to their pages.

How to get quality one-way links and rank competitively?

You can try to convince other sites to just link to your page by employing a few strategies. If your web site has lots to offer to your fellow webmasters, especially unique and complementary content it will be met with great response and might even get linked to.

Creative ways to secure one way links to your website

• Offer information on how other websites can link to your site. Try to make the whole process as simple as possible by providing code in form of text links or banners, that can be easily copied and pasted.
• Create unique and relevant content that people are interested in. This can be done in the form of tutorials, tips & tricks, how-to series, advisory information etc. Web site owners will want to link to your site if they feel that it provides content complementary to theirs.
• You could offer rewards and goodies to sites that link to you in the form of free e-Books, software downloads, trial offers, discount coupons, online tools, content syndication or other items of interest.
• Offer link backs in exchange for relevant incoming links, from other non mission-critical online properties or personal pages you may own.

Unless your page gets the attention you want the next step would be to resort to professional services that have many years of experience in finding quality sites and linking them to you. This is of course not for free, as they have to arrange some other ways to link back to those sites linking to you. But this is by far the most effective solution and not as costly as you might think.

Companies specialized in finding link partners

What if you could participate in a one way link exchange with only relevant web sites, all important and popular in the eyes of search engines? There are various companies that focus on obtaining one-way non-reciprocal links from high value sites, such as authority, relevant and industry leading websites and linking them to you.

There are certainly a great many companies on the internet offering their services, some of them are good and others are only good with words. Nowadays everybody wants to be an expert claiming to be the best in its industry and sometimes it may seem it takes as long to find reputable companies as it would to just do all the work yourself. But still, you might want to check out the following services, though. Some of them offer a free trial period.

One-way-link-exchange

They offer different link packages ranging from 100 links to one thousand links. You are sure to find a suitable package taylore to your needs. If you are just starting out you could get for example, 100 one-way back Links instantly for only to $7.50 per month ($90 a year). This is a lot and might be all you need to get you going.

Adding links to your site is easy, simply select all the links you want, click the one-way link button and start receiving links from those web sites immediately! You can view all the pages linking to you and even check the page rank of your site.

Features:

All the web sites included in this campaign are legal, hard-working web sites working to boost their link popularity at search engines through the unique one-way linking strategy offered by these programs.

How do they work?

They usually try to convince high quality websites to link to you by offering them something helpful and free, such as search engine tools, free page ranking tools in exchange of credit links to your web site. These providers also use their own online properties to offer links to potential partners and request them to give a one-way link to your site, getting your website "only-incoming" one-way links. This is called cross link-exchange.

How does Cross Link Exchange work?

One of the concepts of one way link exchange is to cross-link a number of sites rather than linking them directly to each other. This system uses a method of linking known as 3-way linking and one-way linking respectively. Confusing? It's actually quite simple and just a matter of how you look at it.

Unlike the traditional one-way link, where only one site benefits, with a 3-way linking method all three sites get what Google sees as a one-way link to their web site. Site A links to site B, site B links to site C, and site C links to site A (as shown in the graphic).

This is where the power of this system lies. These all appear as simple one-way links to search engines and so carry maximum value to your web site. Technically speaking it is a one-way link exchange (on the "outside"), but if you look closer it's more like a reciprocal link exchange with partnering web sites in between.

Not all links are created equally. Google wants to see certain kinds of links into your web site before it will rank the site for your selected keywords. Those 3 things are:

Thanks to this technique your link-exchanges are impossible to retrace for Google and that's why you can get a better Page Rank for your site without any problem or sanctions. As you can imagine this approach is more elaborate involving more resources and therefore tends to be more costly than reciprocal link building.

Affordability - How much does it cost?

Traffic received from established links is essentially free, but earning those links is not and takes time and money. For the most part, building links is associated with upfront costs that can be seen as a capital investment in site marketing that will pay off later. It's difficult to name a price, as the amount of money you have to spend depends on what you want to achieve. Some companies only require a one time payment whereas others charge a monthly fee.

Common Misconceptions

"Links thematically related to your site are the better ones." This really only applies to reciprocal links.

Giving weight to thematically related reciprocal links is just the search engine's way to account for the thousands of reciprocal links some people use to artificially inflate their popularity and to address possible spam linkings. Of course, many of those links may well be legitimate votes of popularity, but there needs to be made a distinction between "genuine" one way links and two-way links. Therefore the search engines decided to compromise and opted to give more credit for thematically related links. This is not an issue with non-reciprocal linking, as these links are seen as "unselfish" links where there is nothing the linking web site gets in return.

Do you think that "one-way non-reciprocal linking" is a good idea?

It all depends on how serious you are about your web site's popularity and how much effort you are willing to put into it. But in terms of ranking competitively high in the search engine's listings this is definately the way to go. There is nothing better than getting lots of non-reciprocal quality links themed around your site. The more the merrier! In a nutshell, yes it is a very good idea!

Which Link Building Plan will be best for me?

Given the important role inbound links play in marketing and promoting a web site, you are confronted with a myriad of options and tools designed to help you find and maintain those links.

Both types of plans are helpful in your efforts of getting better positioned by search engines. Depending on your budget you can choose either plan. The only difference between these two link building approaches is that reciprocal links are not as higly regarded by search engines as one way links, hence you need more of them to arrive at the same result as you would with one way links. However, reciprocal links are usually easier to get in less time, which makes up for their shortcoming in terms of popularity. When using link services, the direct-reciprocal link exchange option tends to be less cost intensive than the one-way, non-reciprocal variant.

Yes, the one-way linking method is looked upon more favourably by search engines than the other one, but because of that can be more cost and/or time intensive as well.

If you are still not sure and can't decide, why not try both variants and see which one works best for you? Maybe you find that, if used together, the two methods complement each other and get you even better results. Who is to say you can't have the best of both worlds!

How to tell "good" links from the "bad" ones?

Linking to "bad neighborhoods" is a big NO and should be avoided at all costs. Web sites that have been penalized by search engines because they have spammy link pages, are considered a link farm or deploy dubious black-hat techniques are all "bad neighborhoods" for you. Linking to those pages can earn you penalties for your site too.

It's not always that easy to spot such a bad neighborhood and if you are in doubt it's best to leave this site until you have gathered enough information to make an informed decision.

Why are Link Farms bad?

Being associated with Link Farms can result in your site being banned from important search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Why are link farms so bad for you? There is no authority or control mechanism, so people can add whatever URL they want to those pages for free. You probably don't want a link to your site that appears on the same page as links to adult membership sites and all those spam sites most of you find in your spam mail folder almost every day. These pages tend to be full of hundreds of keyword stuffed links without much accompanying text and there seems to be no method to the way they are arranged, such as a general theme or market area.

How to avoid "Bad Neighborhoods"?

It can be difficult to detect or identify a bad neighbourhood. Even if you think a web site is trustworthy it may turn out to be the opposite. Already-penalized websites and sites deploying black-hat SEO techniques are not easy to spot. It's not all that bad, though. Google won't penalize you for a few mistakes and is pretty forgiving, but why not avoid those mistake as much as you can right from the beginning and keep a clean record or should I say "white hat" ;o)

non-reciprocal link building

A good way to avoid unintentionally linking to bad neighborhood sites would be a non-reciprocal link building campaign, where you only get inbound links without having to link back to the source. Search engines go by a premise that if "bad" sites link to yours it's not your fault, as it defies your control who links to you and who doesn't. Unless you link back to them your site won't get penalized, even if several bad sites linked to you. One-way link building campaigns are very safe for this reason, since your site does not lose reputation even if the incoming link turns out to be "bad".

reciprocal link building - use reputable services specialized in finding quality sites

As trading links with other web sites is a very convenient and widely used tecnique to increase traffic it would be a shame to just not use it out of fear to be associated with "bad" sites. Especially when you are just starting out it is much easier and more effective to convince somebody to link to your site by offering to link back to them as opposed to just waiting for someone to find your site eventually and link to it.

You can gather a considerable amount of good links in less time than you would with one-way link building. This makes up for the extra links you need, compared to the inbound-only links method, to get the same results. The outcome may be in no way inferior to non-reciprocal link building. In fact, if you get enough relevant sources from enough web sites they might actually outweigh the importance that has been assigned to a few one way links pointing at your web site.

Unless you have the time and are really sure about a site's reputation it's recommended to let companies that are experts in their field help you. Linking to another web site via direct link exchange exposes you to the possibility of your page unknowingly linking to bad neighborhoods and therefore should be carefully evaluated. Automated link exchange software can make things easier for webmasters on the hunt for good link exchanges.

Arelis, by Axandra is one of the best known programs and an excellent tool for this purpose. The people behind this program have been in business for more than 10 years and can offer a lot more than that. Leave it up to them to do all the tedious work and get top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo and all other major search engines, otherwise you will get your money back!

How Arelis works

You enter your URL and keywords that you feel are most relevant and best describe your web site. Click the "Find new link partners" button and the software will suggest relevant and similar websites to you. The program will also list sites that link to your competitors, so you can investigate the possibility of doing exchanges with them as well.

Arelis is FREE to download on a trial basis, so you can try it out and see if the program is one that works for you. Click here to learn more and download your free trial copy.

Link building additional ways

Get Links Through Directory Submission

A Way to get quality inbound links and direct traffic

Directory submission is a very effective and yet affordable solution to get additional direct traffic as well as perfectly relevant one-way links to your site. Getting listed in a category related to your web site not only gives you well targeted traffic, but also will have a positive effect on your PageRank and your position in the search engine results page (SERPs).

Other ways: Links via articles and blogs, Forum Participation, E-mail signatures, Add Testimonials, Press Release (see more on next page)

Summary - Last Words

We have shown you the most popular ways of building links. Now it's up to you to make the most of this information. There is no such thing as THE best way to generate links, as they all have their advantages. It all depends on what your goals are, how quickly you want to achieve them and of course on your budget. In our opinion a good way to go about getting your links is to employ different strategies and see which one works best for you. Then spend most of your efforts on the strategy that worked best for you without loosing sight of the other ones, though. They still are valuable resources too and should not be overlooked if you want to maximize your success.

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