Is back-linking a good SEO strategy in 2018?

I recently saw a question online and thought it would make a good topic for today’s post.

The question was:

“If everyone in this private business group with a website created links to each others’ websites, we could hypothetically boost SEO and create our own little community. What do you think?”

When I read this I had memories of 2012-ish tactics where this type of activity was quite common.

In it’s original format as just “links”, it is unfortunately no longer a good strategy, and should be avoided.

But — it got me thinking — and I think I’ve come up with a better strategy which is definitely acceptable and will benefit all. I replied to this question with the following idea:

Mass reciprocal linking simply for SEO purposes is an “old school” technique – and isn’t a good idea – as Google lets us know often enough :-8

But I have an idea … and I call it my SEO Reciprocal Interview Strategy

If you really wanted to use reciprocal back-links, perhaps create an up-to-date Back-link Strategy around it. For example:

let’s start with 5 people who agree on 5 questions to ask
each person could then ask each other business owner 5 (or more) of these pre-set questions
each person could “interview” each of the other business owners (via email, Skype, or recorded Facetime, smartphone or tablet)
then create a Category on each of their websites/blogs for “Business Interviews” (or something like that – even better if the Niche keywords are in that Title, for example “Business Interviews About Video Marketing”)
if done via email, the person being interviewed could email back the answers which could be added to a unique “interview page” on the Interviewer’s website
this is also the equivalent of a Transcript for a video (see where I’m going with this?).

The Benefits of the SEO Reciprocal Interview Strategy

This technique would look relevant, professional, respectable and valuable to the web visitors (and search engine robots) for each of the websites.

The other business owner could then write a post on their own site (and mention on social media) something like this:

“Great news! I was recently interviewed by Brandon XYZ of ABC, about my 5 top tips for business owners who are trying to (whatever topic your questions were about). Check it out!” and provide the link back to the Interviewer’s article.

Yes this takes a bit more time, but even if the Interviewer only did 5 of these interviews and created 5 interview blog posts, and then those 5 business people mentioned the Interviewer and added a web-link/URL back to THEIR specific interview page on the interviewee site, that’s a huge PLUS in Mr Google’s eyes :-)

Bonus step — if the Interviewer also :

asked each of those business people being interviewed to do a mini selfie video to match the interviews, that’s 5 mini videos
add an Intro and Outro to each one
then published them on Youtube
and also published them on the relevant page or blog post

the Interviewer could absolutely boost their site’s traffic and credibility to make a huge difference!

So — is back-linking a good SEO strategy in 2018?

What do you think?

I think that creating back-links just for the sake of “links” is an old-school, Black Hat SEO technique – and definitely not a good idea. BUT I have a suggestion – let’s always use good SEO strategies like the one I’ve outlined above.

Anyone want to test my theory?

Give me a yell, send me a message, post on Facebook, Youtube — or let me know if you’d like to Facetime or Skype to chat more about this — I’m happy to test my SEO Reciprocal Interview Strategy to see if it helps :-)

Cheers,

Teena signature

Teena Hughes

Is back-linking a good SEO strategy in 2018?