Reciprocal Linking – Realtor in Flower Mound, Texas Learns the Hard Way

Print Article Print Article

Commentary by Israel Rothman

RISMEDIA, Feb. 18, 2008-What happens when you find yourself on top of search engine searches one day, only to discover you’re no longer there the very next day? To many unknowing Realtors, this is a realty-check for their once-successful websites.

Joy Rice of JoyRiceRealtyGroup.com and her husband Ray Rice felt that they were doing everything right when it came to their business. Considering they spend an ample amount of money on marketing, they have a well-conceived Web presence with fresh content, and made wise choices from their colors scheme to ease of use-the husband-wife team of mortgage lender and Realtor in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas really felt that they were doing an above average job of representing their clients from their Flower Mound, Texas office.

But just as one day they achieved the coveted top Google rankings for many searches that any Realtor in the area would love to come up on, the next they disappeared and were no longer found.

It’s not because they did something wrong or didn’t spend enough money. It’s not that they stopped caring or working hard enough-they were and continue to post every day, including relevant content about the area and local listings on their blog. Their blog is syndicated broadly and it pings every time they post-perfectly optimized for search engine placement in the organic results.

But suddenly they realized they took their approach a little too far. A local competitor was always coming up just above them on searches. When a reciprocal linking a campaign vendor called on them and told them that the competitor was on top of local searches because he had thousands of links, and that the vendor in question could do reciprocal linking campaigns to rank them too, they signed up immediately, against advice to the contrary.

The Rice’s cannot be blamed for an honest mistake, as this marketplace is full misinformation, and, as little as two years ago, these campaigns actually worked.

But this is no longer the case. In fact, Google now penalizes sites who engage in reciprocal linking, as was seen by the sudden disappearance of the Rice’s site from top ranking.

The Uphill Climb

It will be up to the Rices to “ask Google’s permission to be forgiven,” and, eventually, they will be. Working with Social Media Systems, they will put back on top, but unfortunately they can never recover the lost business they would have had before diagnosing the problem.

At Social Media Systems, knowing that our other clients rank well, we could not find anything wrong with their setup. Fortunately I asked one more time “did you buy anything from anybody without telling us?” Ray fired back an e-mail about the reciprocal linking, and then we knew immediately what had happened.

The Solution

For those who have made the same mistake, following these three steps:

- Remove the links
- Go to Google’s Webmaster Central
- And submit a re-inclusion request

When you do this, don’t plead ignorance. You’ll get a better result with owning up to your mistake and promising not to do it again than saying you don’t know what happened and you were penalized erroneously.

If you have not already made this mistake, don’t do it. Reciprocal linking campaigns, for the purpose of achieving rankings, is a no-no, and Google will catch it.

Israel Rothman is an Internet advertising consultant who writes for several online magazines. Rothman has been a pioneer in Social Media Marketing as a method of intentional search engine placement for over 800 companies during the last ten years. He is CEO and founder of SocialMediaSystems.com LLC.

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com.

For more ways to optimize your online initiatives, see:


© RISMedia 2009. All Rights Reserved