One of the search marketing myths that just won't seem to die is that idea that going out and getting a bazillion reciprocal links with every Tom, Dick and Larry that has a web site is going to propel your company to the top of the search results. In fact, link building is up there with pay-per-click when it comes to search marketing tactics that people claim don't work. As with pay-per-click, nine times out of ten when a company claims that link building doesn't work, it's because they're just not doing it right.

Greg (WebGuerrilla) Boser has some excellent points to make about this topic at his new blog. In a post titled "The Truth About Reciprocal Link Networks," Boser talks about an ex-client that found his well-earned rankings plummeting through the floor as a result of his participation in a reciprocal link network.

From the post:

What I discovered was that my ex-client had been very busy building links since our contract expired. In fact, he had managed to pickup about 7000 new links in about a month and a half. Almost all of these links were coming from a reciprocal linking network called GotLinks.

When I wrote him back and told him that developing that many links in such a short period of time probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, (especially when the top site in his space has been around since '95 and has only managed to collect a total of 250 inbound links) he promptly cancelled his GotLinks account and wrote the owner and asked that all his links be removed.

The problem is that many web site owners simply have no idea how to go about building links. Most honestly believe that they won't be able to get links to their site unless they "trade" with someone else. This is what frustrates me about SEM myth mongers. Rather than encouraging webmasters to build good content so that they can naturally attract links, they convince them to waste their time sending out emails to every site they can find a listing for that has a links page.

That's why webmasters need to start spending more time focusing on building content that people find attractive and less time focusing on filling up their site with links to companies that their visitors could care less about.