He Says, She Says

He says, she says. What is in the cards for reciprocal links? I have been involved in a correspondence with a link “expert” that works at a very well known SEO firm who says Google is going to eliminate the value of reciprocal links altogether, and have been doing so for the past three months.

Google is really looking at the quality of your links. They want only one way and quality rather than junk. All reciprocal links will not be worth anything. Directory links will not be worth anything. Press releases will not count. Google wants only high quality complimentary ‘one way’ links and links from ‘testimonial’ sites. And Google has already started adjusting their index and deleting sites. This ‘house cleaning’ will continue until January. This has actually been going on for about 3 months.

I understand that Google sees most reciprocal links as “unnatural”, yet aren’t there many scenarios to consider in which reciprocal linking is natural? I mean come on, ALL reciprocal links will have no value? As for reciprocal links in the form of link pages, well that’s a given as far as that getting the ax. But what if the reciprocal links are within good quality content? If what this guy is saying is true, then the world of SEO is in for a real shock with its current linking methods.