Way back reciprocal links was one of the first link building methods I tried. I searched through Google and found 10 or 20 of the top authority sites that were in my niche market and simply sent them a personal email and it worked. It even worked for a Microsoft owned site though the link was later removed.

So this week when I see blanket comments from SEO's binning reciprocal links as rubbish and poor quality I don't necessarily agree. Some of these comments are poorly written with no clear distinction and send out the wrong signal IMHO. I go through the link profile of quite a few sites both clients and competitor sites, and I can still see sites doing well, some of them with little more than decent reciprocal links.

Seems to me that some link building methods are in vogue, the ass is ripped out of them, then Google fires an arrow across the bows, posts a word of warning on 'Excessive Reprical Links' and some SEO's abandon the method all together.

I and some others wouldn't discount reciprocal links for any small business website.

Here's my tips, don't think of a reciprocal link in SEO terms, use them to form and cement partnerships. Rather than having a 'links' page with no content, rather than just a series of links why not try and build out a page with good images and good content and with links to your 'business partners' in the content of the page.

Also someone that you have some sort of relationship with and is willing to give you a reciprocal link as an endorsement is more likely to reference you on a forum or other social platform and thus create a secondary link.

So with the Panda update rolling out to the UK, what did Panda achieve?

I still see loads of sites, powered by web 2.0 backlinks with spun content at the top of the listings, very obvious link networks, unrelated links, and paid links becoming even more prevalent, so much so that even brands with clean cut public images are heavily involved.

Interesting that according to this site - http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2011/04/12/googles-panda-update-rolls-out-to... Electric Pig suffered a massive drop in rankings, yet on reading this article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13091708 Electric Pig hasn't seen a significant drop in their rankings and traffic. It would be interesting to know how these figures are calculated. Are some of the figures made up, inaccurate or embellished as linkbait?

Just a last thought on this, one of my sites that solely has links from Ezine Articles hasn't actually been affected. Although Ezine Articles search visibility has been dealt a blow, the anchor text relevancy and juice that it passes arguably hasn't.

No doubt many of the sites affected will clean up their sites and bounce back and we'll be all back to square one.

Just the other day I had a friend contact me that owns a keyword rich domain name, it's Belfast SEO. So a company comes along and purchases the the .co.uk version and spoils his day. He feels that maybe he should have bought the .co.uk

Fair enough, but when the company appears to be from Glasgow, is that justified? Should companies just be allowed to buy keyword rich domains and step on other people's toes?

Personally it doesn't bother me, nothing surprises me and my advice would be to just get on with it. Shit happens. Build a better site than them, get more backlinks and build a long term strategy.

Relying on Google traffic for Belfast SEO terms isn't going to make a business or get you enough inquiries, over the course of a year you may get one or two decent inquiries. For me a more brandable name would make sense and protect yourself against any future swipe that Google takes against keyword rich domains.

Is this the Google Sandbox Effect?

I purchased a domain name, it was a keyword rich domain name. Set up a directory on it, added a few listings and let it sit, hoping that companies within the niche would stumble across it and add their listings.

Even though it was a keyword rich domain name, the market is pretty competitive. It’s in the web design field. The website didn’t rank anywhere for the main terms for 6 months. The homepage languished down between page 18 and 30 for the main term.

A couple of weeks ago I happened to be just manually checking through a few random keywords terms for one or two personal sites and client sites and noticed that the homepage had shot up to page 5.

Now that’s a big shift, particuarly considering there had been no link building. Checking out the site’s link profile just in case someone else was using it as a testing site, again showed no links.

So why the sudden movement? Why was the site suddenly unleashed, and why this site in particular?