Will this many reciprocal links negatively affect SEO?

[Sutra]

Is there a general consensus on how many reciprocal links are ok? I'm not talking about sitewide links, just regular links.

@Calamari and @Ryuzaki you guys mentioned in my other thread that a handful of reciprocals is ok. Any idea if there's a general limit on it? I was gonna PM you guys but figured it would be good info for others too, so posting here.

For context: I get a lot of users asking me if I offer xx service in their specific area. I do not. But I do have a number of users on my website and Facebook pages that DO offer that service. Affiliate revenue, or selling leads to the vendors isn't feasible (it will set me up to monetize in other ways down the road though). So instead, I figure I could create local pages that list these vendors in exchange for a link on their site. This would a) Get me a bunch of relevant links and b) provide a helpful service to my users.

These local pages with vendors could number in the hundreds over time. Possibly thousands. So wondering if having that many reciprocal links will be a problem.

What say you?

 

[Ryuzaki]

I don't think there's a negative effect so much as a diminishing effect, like you may only get 80% of the juice.

But there's a 1000 other factors that also make it worth it. Personally I'd take them all. As many as possible. Especially if the links aim at a different page than the one you placed their link on. Domain-to-Domain is something I don't consider reciprocal. Page-to-Page is the issue and really it's a non-issue. Take the links!

 

[Steve Brownlie]

Reciprocal links got people into trouble in a couple of highly manipulative instances (I only know of two but I don't follow 'grey hat' stuff that closely) so rather than second guess Google's internal filters I'd just think about what has specifically hit people, and then what natural sites look like and from that evidence you can probably deduce what is reasonable for your site and avoid letting yourself go too far out of balance.

Situation 1: Automated reciprocal linking via software. You probably remember links pages used to have automation 'link to us, submit the page and we'll automatically add you to this links page' type features. That kind of thing has seen unnatural links penalties.

Situation 2: A bunch of competing real estate agents in the US got penalties after they came up with the idea that they'd all link to each other in some kind of network.

Now having said that re: situation 2, I've discovered a fair few of 'local SEO firms' that put an entire directory of all their random clients on all of their client sites... and needless to say they don't all have penalties. Actually none of the ones I found did... Not a recommendation, of course, just something that appears lower on the priority list at the moment in terms of actual manual actions.

Natural: Take a look at a bunch of large sites - you'll see a fair few reciprocal links that are entirely natural. Suppliers and vendors mentioning each other/giving testimonials/sharing content. Heck even news sites - run a story about someone and they often link to it in their press section... lots of perfectly natural reasons for these links to exist. If you take some time looking at how things occur naturally 'in the wild' you'll be in a much better position to not only think how you can get those natural opportunities yourself, but also avoid doing anything that puts you obviously as an outlier.

 

[Calamari]

I don't think there's a negative effect so much as a diminishing effect, like you may only get 80% of the juice.

But there's a 1000 other factors that also make it worth it. Personally I'd take them all. As many as possible. Especially if the links aim at a different page than the one you placed their link on. Domain-to-Domain is something I don't consider reciprocal. Page-to-Page is the issue and really it's a non-issue. Take the links!

Cosigned, especially the part about about domain to domain versus page to page.