Does reciprocal linking carry any value?

[Jseddon92]

No matter how much I research this one, there's no definite answer and there's a lot of contradictions.

Basically we're looking to launch an article on 24 expert interior design tips for 2015. Each tip is submitted from a different interior designer we have chosen who have a reputable, trusted website.

The main goal for this article is to generate various inbound links for our site from the designers and it will help to create engagement on social media. Although if we're giving out links to these designers for their contributions, the inbound links we receive in return will be little or no value as this is reciprocal linking?

Some say this is okay as it's completely natural within the blog posts, others say to avoid it as it can be seen as an obsolete practice to deceive Google. Does anyone have any more information on this and how it should be carried out?

Would a better process be to link to their social media accounts? Rather than reciprocal linking?

Thanks

[Toddfoster]

Hello Joshua,

What you are describing is nothing to be concerned about. It is a completely natural process when content is being created for there to be some form of reciprocal linking. This is especially true in list-pieces such as the one you are describing. There is no real need to avoid linking directly to them, and certainly nothing to worry about with regards to their social media accounts.

What Google is trying to get away from is people creating websites to link to each other using the same hosting or from the same webmaster. This is what leads to penalties. From their perspective, you are all (likely) on separate hosting, you all have different webmasters, and you are clearly recognized brands that are completely separate from one another. This is the kind of article they would want to see show up and is unlikely to create any unwelcome attention.

The links you receive will have plenty of value, assuming you are not being linked-to extravagantly over and over from the same domain. It's totally normal to see a couple of pages on a single domain link to another, but it gets to be spammy when you begin seeing 10's, 100's or even 1000's of links coming from a single source.

What you are describing is normal content creation - something Google has been adamant about for years. I don't think there's anything for you to worry about here.

Best of luck with the launch!

Rob