UrbanConservative’s Unethical Reciprocal Links

By Bruce Kelly

While checking links today I discovered that UrbanConservative, one of my link "partners" was reciprocating with the rel="nofollow" tag. It's my strong opinion that this is an unethical way to reciprocate in a link exchange and here's why.

We trade or exchange links (reciprocals) for two reasons. To share our visitors with like minded web sites and blogs and to increase our ranking and relevancy in search engines.

Speaking for myself, I get very little traffic from web surfers actually clicking on the links from my link partners, most of my traffic comes from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. I'm in those search engines because of those link exchanges and I'm very grateful for them. Thank you all.

When you link to another web site you are telling search engines that this is a good and relevant web site, worthy of your link, and that a search engine spider or web robot should crawl that site and add it to the listing, if it's not already there, or reward it by placing it higher in the results and (in Google's case) increase it's PageRank. You are basically voting for that site.

The rel="nofollow" tag was created as a way for bloggers to fight spam in their blog's comments section. The rel="nofollow" tag tells search engines that this link is spam, it's not to be followed and I do not vote for this site as trustworthy or relevant. It's not a good link.

That's fine, unless that link is part of a RECIPROCAL link exchange. If my web site is no good, unworthy of a link, why have you linked to it begin with? Why did you ask me for a link? Is your links page simply a trick to get me to link to you? If so then you have engaged in a dishonest practice and turned what was supposed to be a reciprocal link exchange into a one way link in order to game the search engines and increase your own search engine rankings. You've told Google, Yahoo! and the other search engines that my link to you is a vote for your "good" site but your link to me is not, that your link to me should be ignored by the search engines. Read what Google says about the rel="nofollow" tag.

Next time you visit the UrbanConservative's Best Conservative Blogs page and read about his superior search engine rankings you'll know how he got there. You voted for him (at his request!) with an honest, valid link and he's reciprocated by telling the search engines that your link is spam, invalid and untrustworthy.

Yahoo!
Conservative Blog - #3
Conservative Blogs - #2
Best Conservative Blog - #2
Best Conservative News Blog - #1
Best Conservative Political Blog - #1
Conservative News - #6
Conservative Politics - #2

Google
Conservative Blog - #1
Conservative Blogs - #2
Conservative News - #8
Conservative Politics - #6

I think this is unethical and I'm not the only one. Read WebmasterWorld Link Development: Dirty Tricks.

I've been a webmaster for about ten years now. I built Brucekelly.com using Notetab Lite, a freeware text editor. This blog is a modified version of Blogger's Minima template. I know just about every dirty trick in the book and I've used some of them in the past; but no more. I've learned through hard experience that the best way to build and maintain a viable, long term presence on the web is to play fair, to be straight with others, and never try to game the system.

I do indeed use the "nofollow" tag, but never on reciprocal links. If you link to Brucekelly.com you get a straight forward link back. Even if you use one of those mostly useless javascript Blogrolling links. It's not the intent of those who use Blogrolling for link exchanges to deny me a search engine robot friendly link, they just don't know any better. You'll still get a hard coded, bot friendly link from me.

I've even found web sites and blogs linking to me and added them without them ever asking. Common Sense and Wonder was the first blog to ever give me a link. I didn't ask and they didn't tell. They just liked my site and linked me up. I reciprocated, and that's why they will remain at the top of my listings for as long as I have a web site. It's my way of saying thanks.

I was checking my site on Google's Webmaster Tools just this past weekend and found Se Vitav Resnoc (that's conservatives spelled backwards by the way) with a big fat link to Brucekelly.com just sitting there. He never asked for reciprocal link, but I saw it and linked him up. Why? That's what fair minded webmasters do.

I guess that's why I find UrbanConservatives actions so offensive. He requested the link. He actively seeks out reciprocal link exchanges and then decieves his less web savy partners with a snippet of html. He then uses his high search engine rankings as a selling point for accepting the link exchange when it's his deceptive practices that actually created those rankings to begin with.
My first reaction to UrbanConservatives link strategy was to simply reciprocate with my own "nofollow" tag, but then I read the comments; honest bloggers, grateful for the link exchange, not realizing they're being used. It really bothered me. Bloggers are writers after all, not webmasters, and here they are, being taken advantage of by a trickster in a search engine ranking scheme that only benefits the UrbanConservative. Shame on you UrbanConservative.

If you're happy with this kind of link exchange, that's not really a link exchange at all, more power to you. When I added the UrbanConservative's link to my site we agreed on a RECIPROCAL link exchange. This isn't. I'm removing his link and I think you should too. I don't believe in rewarding bad behavior.