The last series of Google updates that started at the end of October has shown that Google is once more again a big step ahead of many webmasters and SEO Bounty Hunters. It seems like this time reciprocal links have been stamped as “less valuable” or maybe even “worthless” to Google.

Our observations have shown that link exchanges between non-relevant websites are apparently recognized as “reciprocal” and that they either disappear from Google’s list of existing back links or that they carry less value for inbound links. This resulted in either loss of page rank or direct referrals from Google which again means less high ranking in the search results for these websites.

Websites that participated in link exchange programs will soon have to realize that these link exchanges are not helpful anymore. But to recognize this it requires thorough analysis of traffic and how a website is listed in Google. Many webmasters will fail to realize this early on and continue with their strategy of exchanging links. They will lose valuable time that could be used for more important things to work on. This is good for webmasters who are becoming aware of this change in Google’s way of ranking websites and concentrate on other SEO related processes.

What are things webmasters should now concentrate on when doing SEO work? Webmasters should now concentrate on building strong one-way inbound links. Best ways to do this are press releases, publishing articles and the old fashion linking from directories. Link exchanges can still work as long as they are not reciprocal. An example would be that 2 webmasters have 2 websites each. Site A links to site C. Site C then links to site B and site B links to site D while site D links to site A.