Google suggests that one of the ways for a website to rank higher in its search engine is to get other websites to link back. Reciprocal links are a popular way to achieve this. However, some SEO experts believe Google no longer favors reciprocal links as highly as it once did.
These days Google puts more weight on sites that have one-way incoming links to help it determine ranking for the targeted site. One of the strategies for getting google Suggest what appears to be one-way links to the Google search engine is to use a link networking method called 3-way links.
This article examines three things about the 3-way link method, which are keywords selection, site characteristics and link requests. Understanding these three elements will help you get better results with this linking strategy.
Keyword Selection
The 3 way link strategy is effective, but that doesn’t mean you can be lazy about the keywords your are targeting. Results won’t be as effective when you are targeting highly competitive keywords. The best chance of ranking high is to target keywords that have high demand and low supply. A good keyword tool or service can help you determine the optimum keywords you can have success with.
To avoid any penalties that Google may impose on your sites, you’ll have to vary the keywords you are targeting. If all your anchor text in your links are all the same, that would appear unnatural to Google and they may consider it as keyword spamming.
Site Characteristics
Contrary to logic or what some SEO experts believe, sites that are participating in the 3 way link strategy don’t need to be about the same or on related topics. That is good news because the reality is it’s hard to find sites that are related and when they are found, there usually isn’t enough to create a 3 way link structure that would have an effect on improving ranking.
For the participants in the 3 way link strategy to benefit in a ranking boost on Google, they already must have at least two pages indexed by Google. This may be due to Google favoring itself and any web pages it has indexed therefore also gets favorable treatment.
Link Requests
The 3 way link strategy is easy to understand and appreciate, however it can be a big task trying to find sites that will participate. A way to find potential participants is to search for sites who practice reciprocal linking and convince them of the superiority of one-way linking. But approaching other webmasters can be tough. Not all of them will respond and some will reject requests as spam.
An alternative to finding and requesting links on your own is to join a 3 way linking network. These networks have a supply of participant sites that don’t need to be contacted in order to have them link to other sites within the network. The linking functions in these networks are google Suggest automated and don’t require any grunt work other than to initially set up a links page and select appropriate keywords. The biggest drawback is that such a service isn’t free. It requires participants to pay recurring monthly subscription fees. If the service is cancelled, then the one way links to the site will be removed.
Conclusion
We’ve learned that having incoming links can boost a sites’ ranking in Google, and the 3 way link strategy is more effective than reciprocal links. When using a 3 way link strategy, choosing the right keyword and varying it in the anchor text is important. Sites that link to other sites in the 3 way link network don’t have to be related by topic they just have to have a few pages already indexed in Google. You can try to find sites on your own and create your 3 way link network from scratch. Alternatively, you can join a 3 way link membership for a monthly fee and get sites linking to you without performing any grunt work. The 3 way linking strategy may be the long term search engine ranking solution you’ve been waiting for.
