Reciprocal Linking Scams, What to look for and How to avoid them by
Brian Osborne
Reciprocal linking scams have increased immensely during the past year.
Initially we thought that this problem only related to gambling and casino
related websites but an audit of our commercial link partners suggests that it
is a serious problem within the broader online community.
Over the past eighteen months, we noticed that our page rank was slowly
declining despite the fact that we were continually adding new link partners to
our link directory. We had slipped from a five down to a two before we finally
identified the exact cause of the problem. Out of the first 100 links on our
anchor site, only seven were still being reciprocated.
We recrawled the sites where no link was found with the second spider and got
exactly the same result. Then we started manually checking the sites where no
link back was found and started discovering patterns of deliberate link fraud.
The scams in order of popularity amongst the scammers
1. The link on the home page to the link directory remained but clicking on it
or specific directory links produced a template style page with a few casino
banners or simply a page with no directory content - This scam was most popular
with the owners of multiple domains with the .co.za and .co.uk suffixes
2. The link on the home page to the link directory remained but clicking on
gambling or casino related links returned a list of links to sites owned solely
by the same person or company. The worst offenders in this group preferred
domain extensions of .biz, .us and .md
3. The link directory index page remained but the link directory had been
severely pruned and most remaining links were to the site owners other sites or
to casinos. This one is common across all suffixes.
4. Links not clickable - links to the directory and various pages within the
directory remained intact. At the time of their link exchange campaign, their
links were clickable but at some stage after that the code that makes the link
clickable was removed and the site name was placed in bold text so at a glance
it appeared to be a legitimate clickable link. This scam is most favored by
sites that place a miniature screen shot of the index page of your site beside
your back link.
5. A variation of the previous scam. When you run your mouse pointer over the
page, the 'links' change color but no URL displays in the search bar at the
bottom of your browser window. Right click has been disabled on the page so
that most people looking at the page cannot see the code. If you use
Dreamweaver MX or later, highlight the part of the page you want to look at and
then using Control C copy it to the clip board and then use Control V to paste
it into the design side of a basic Dreamweaver page. When you click on code you
can see what they were attempting to stop you seeing. It may work in the later
versions of similar authoring programs. Worst offenders are a poker room and a
media company operating out of India.
6. One way link exchanges - usually you are contacted by a search engine
optimization company or the SEO person for a large group of websites offering
you multiple one way link exchanges with half of their sites if you will link
back to the other half of their sites. After a few weeks or months the links to
your sites are deleted. The worst offender in this group is a prominent search
engine optimization company located in India.
7. Your link starts out on a page with fair page rank usually attached to a
domain with high page rank. But after a few weeks is moved to a boon docks page
with no page rank that will never be indexed. - common amongst higher PR sites.
8. The link directory is on another domain with no page rank. When you click on
the link to the directory on the home page, always watch the bar in the bottom
of your browser window and see that the link you clicked is in fact on the
domain with which you are exchanging links - watch especially for domain names
that are very similar e.g. one letter different in the spelling or a .net
instead of a .com and link pages that are hosted on the domain of a link
management company. Also watch for redirects. If suspicious go back and click
the link again. Often the redirected URL flashes up for only an instant or it
just takes an inordinate time for the page to load compared to other pages on
the site. If in doubt search for a site map - very popular with some owners of
multiple bingo sites. 9. Sub domains of domains with no page rank. Sub domains
are supposed to always rank lower than the parent domain. (Of late I have found
a few sub domains with up to PR3 attached to a domain with no page rank) If the
parent domain has a page rank of zero then link pages attached to that sub
domain will almost always be zero so why trade a good link for a dud link?
10. We have never fallen for any in this group but many novice webmasters do so
regularly. Beware of high PR sites offering you a link exchange on one of their
inconsequential internal pages with the same PR as your index page in return
for you placing a graphic link to their index page on your index page. This is
a deliberate attempt to steal your hard earned traffic. A variation of this one
is they have a number of new sites listed on their index page each month and
visitors are encouraged to vote for the site they consider to be the best and
you are asked to ask your visitors to vote for your site at the high ranked
domain. The purpose is still the same as in the first example in this group.
11. We no longer trade links with sites using Linksmanager unless the link to
our site is to be on a hard coded page. You can search in their search box for
their link to your site and if they are still linking to you, your URL and site
description will be returned but no information to show which page your link is
on. Google usually indexes only a few pages in each category of dynamically
generated link directories. If your link has not been added to an indexed page,
it is unlikely to ever end up on one. When we had a large number of indexed
back links, no link manager links were ever returned in a back link querry. 12.
Be wary of link exchange requests from webmasters using anonymous e-mail
addresses because when they delete your back link they also delete the
anonymous e-mail address.
13. Beware of webmasters with PR 5 or above sites offering you a 'link exchange
with a high PR site' and an inspection of their link directory suggests that
your link will end up on a non indexed page i.e. a useless link that is
unlikely to ever improve. If the link exchange was with a PR 2 or 3 site there
is at least reasonable potential for the PR of the page to increase if the link
directory has been fairly constructed.
Reduce exposure to link scams To reduce your exposure to such scams it is
essential to carefully vet all potential link partners in the first instance.
Enter link back partner details in a database. As an absolute minimum, enter
their URL, the location of the link back on their site, the page rank of the
page on which your link is located, the date of the link exchange and a real
e-mail address for the contact person.
Use a good link checking program monthly and contact offenders as soon as you
find your link is missing from their site. This is now essential to keep link
partners honest. This problem is a direct consequence of the current page rank
system and fierce competition for top rankings. It is easier to retain existing
link partners than to continually find new ones. Points to look for when
Assessing Potential Link Partners
Before trading links, look carefully at the other site -
1. If there is no link to the link directory on the index page -Reject - you
will get no traffic from that site.
2. Look at the structure of their link directory and count the number of clicks
from their index page to where their link to you is likely to be located and
then deduct that number from the PR of the site's index page. If that page is
PR3 and there are three clicks to get to the page on which your link will be
located, that page will have a PR0. That link will be worthless unless the site
gets a minimum of a PR4.
3. If you have not already done so, download Google's tool bar. If the page
rank bar is grayed out, when you are looking at a site, never trade links with
that site. The grey bar is said to indicate that the site is banned by Google.
I do not know if that is true but I have only ever seen two sites produce grey
bars. 4. A growing number of sites with dynamically generated link directories
have no page rank on any link pages even though the directories are often
constructed in such a way that you would expect the page to rank to be 2 points
below the home page. I do not know how most are achieving this. The visible way
is to have multiple folders and index pages leading to the links pages and the
number of clicks from the home page destroys any potential page rank for the
link page. A rare method is to add a no index command for the link directory in
their robots.txt file. Just remember links to such sites are one way links from
your site to their site. You give them a good link and they give you a
worthless link. A link on a page with a PR0 is a non indexed link and carries
no value regardless of the page rank of the index page of the site to which it
is attached. When you do a back link check on your domain in Google, you will
notice that very few links to your domain that are on Google indexed pages with
a PR of less than four are returned in your list of back links. This is why I
and others consider that Google now discounts the value of such links. For
indexed pages, count the number of links on the page. The first factor in
determining the value of the link is the page rank of the page on which it is
located. The second factor is the number of links on the page. The value of the
link to you is roughly the page PR divided by the number of links. Of course no
one outside of a chosen few at Google knows the actual formula but that is a
rough approximation and the reason most webmasters will not trade links with
sites with more than 40 links to a page unless the page has a very high PR. A
link on the bottom of a good content page is always better value than a link on
a directory page as more people are likely to click on it. When on the
receiving end of a link exchange request, do not hesitate to ask for your link
to be placed on a specific page and do not hesitate to reject link requests
from sites that do not adhere to basic acceptable linking practices.
When considering link requests from new sites, look at any other sites that
belong to or have been built by the webmaster proposing the link exchange. Most
importantly, look to see if existing link pages have been indexed and the
structure of the directory. This will be a good indicator of what to expect for
the new site.
When you create your own link directory, consider a hand edited directory with
the links at the same level as the rest of the pages on your site. That way
your link pages will be only one point below your index page and you will
attract more link requests because of that.
Many high PR sites will not trade links with you unless you can place their
link back on a minimum of a PR4 page. That way you can start shooting for the
top once your index page makes a 5 as opposed to a 7 with the way many link
directories are set up.
When you are shooting for the top, it helps you get those high pr links you
need to make it to the top.
About the Author
Article by Brian Osborne - brioz@winnersrun.com Brian is an I.T. professional
and the webmaster at http://www.winnersrun.com,
a site
focusing on gambling strategies that also includes some articles of interest to
webmasters.
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