Reciprical Links to Improve SEO
 

Hello,
On a forum I am running I am looking for a clean and straight forward way to link to a number of local businesses web pages to help them promote business. In turn I will ask them to put a link to my url on theirs. Is there a commonly implimented approach to do this with vB? I would guess I could put in a forum just for sponsors and put their url's there but that seems a little deeply embedded to be most effective. Is there a way to create a panel/pane that would display to put their links and business names on? My hope is that if I can link to several other sites that my ranking would be improved with bots/crawlers. I welcome any suggestions/ides.
Thanks.:erm:

--------------- Added [DATE]1401309374[/DATE] at [TIME]1401309374[/TIME] ---------------

Reciprical links are more about organic traffic, and less about SEO.

How many businesses are you talking about? If it is a large amount, a "Links" page is usually used, although I find this kind of content display kind of annoying. If it is a few, just create a sidebar or footer with your sponsors in it. You can rotate the sponsors on page loads to increase white space.

Why don't you refer us to something you have seen and then we can point you in the right direction. :)

Stop worrying about links unless they provide associative content. Worry about content. Spend your time on unique content, create the content in such a way that a scraper cannot duplicate it easily. Unique content will always increase SEO.

Site links make up 70% of SEO

Here are some snaps taken from an SEO training i just completed~

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2014/05/4.png

You can use Moz.com to measure against your competitors

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/

Thanks @DreadUK :)

Content should always be king, as Google has indicated in "Panda4". Unique links from other sites, should not be considered reciprocating links or link pools. Google has repeatedly said as their technology increases, irregular linkage will be factored in -- whatever that means. All pretty much common sense, nothing really to be gleaned.

If our AD revenue growth follows our internal strategies, I am a happy camper. I have no time for anything else and I can still sell our strategy to management. :) I do not consider myself an expert at all in this area, I just have to play the game like the rest of you.

What we would all like to know is what percentage of the pie is content compared to all other aspects. Of course if that information was given, what would we do with all the so called SEO consultants.

http://moz.com/community/q/reciproca...4#reply_122355
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/link-trad...iprocal-links/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_bu...eciprocal_link

Thanks @Zachery, more stuff to confuse me, but more research for next quarters report. :)

We try to setup different strategies on different yet similar (large) sites, from there we try to ratiocinate the strategy for the following quarter. What is interesting (most is not) is comparing the data we receive from analytic companies, compared to our in house revenue statistics.

If any of you are brilliant in this area, the company I work for is always looking for the next genius. It is one of those jobs where a persons performance can definitely be measured.

--------------- Added 28 May 2014 at 18:43 ---------------

I realized that I need to post a disclaimer. None of what I am babbling about above is in reference to forums. The forums I personally run are private, and the very large board I oversee is corporate in nature. All of them are sponsored monetarily, but none of them are monetized using SEO practices. So I am not the one to ask, nor do I want to be, about monetizing your vBulletin forum site.

If you want to have a conversation about the subject, that is different, I am all in and appreciate the insight.

I am not as up to date on SEO stuff as I probably should be. But I understand the basics, and can normally use facts/articles to back other things up. I do listen to people who I know are good in the field and try to parrot their information.

But, in relation to the topic at hand, this has been this way for a while now.

The links have to be "natural".

Just as an example, if I had an addon on dbtech, and I linked to their site, from my site, and they linked back to me, that'd be natural.

In my mind I though this was the rough definition of a natural link: "Natural links are inbound links that site owners did not intentionally create as part of their link building campaign".