Once upon a time, it was standard SEO practice to exchange links with hundreds of other agents, organizing one's outbound links into separate pages by state. I still have my state pages up, but I long ago discontinued the practice of exchanging links with new partners.

Should I take down my state pages altogether? Does having them damage my ranking in the SERPS?

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Santa Cruz Real Estate | Santa Cruz MLS | Santa Cruz County Real Estate

I think it's probably the best idea. Sites have been known to get penalized from them.

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Nicholas May
Creative Linking Team
Real Estate Webmasters

Yes, to be safe, take them down.

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Sam Chapman
Austin, Texas
Austin, TX Real Estate |Austin Luxury Homes |Austin Real Estate Blog

I have taken off our secondary links page and minimized our main reciprocating links page. If contacted by anyone that I had receiprocated with, I simply explain to them that we have done this and appologize. I would expect them to remove us from their pages as well but no one states that they have done this. We still have a 4 google page rank as well as lots of incoming links so I'm not sure how it's effected our site, if at all.

The best way to get natural incoming links is to join blogs, groups & forums. Put your website address on all your signatures and you will see an increase in these incoming links as well as your traffic.

Yes you should and yes that's a possibility as well. Just delete those pages and move on. I removed mine a long time ago, with no ill effects. Maybe we can all get onto just building quality web sites now.

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Jerry Campbell, CRS, GRI
Muljat Group
Bellingham, WA 98225
Professional REALTOR for 15 years
Bellingham Real Estate | Whatcom County Real Estate | Bellingham Homes For Sale

I removed all directory pages recently after reading multiple threads on sites that were penalized, mainly real estate related for using these tactics. Not sure if much attention is still focused on this issue, but I wouldn't take the chance. better to remove and find other creative ways to build backlinks.

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Yeah that's probably considered excessive link exchanging and would be frowned upon. Maybe? go through the links and keep 1 from each city or state - ideally the best one.

We removed our link exchange page and have not noticed a drop of any kind.

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Probably because you didn't notify all your link partners that you were removing their links from your site so now they're giving you a one-way.

I'm suprised you didn't go up in rankings.

I maintain my link directory (although I'm not adding to it) because I don't feel like contacting each individual webmaster and letting them know I'm removing their links. I feel that's the responsible thing to do if you're going to be removing links. Lately, a few folks have suprised me by taking links down without notifying their link partners. This used to be very bad manners at the very least. I don't know what changed to make it acceptable. I guess I'm old school in thinking that if I remove a link to someone's site and don't tell them about it, I'm being a really big jerk. It's right up there with noone using turn signals or passing everyone on a lane that's cutting out - folks used to not do that junk because it was rude. I guess things have changed.

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Eric Rogers - REALTOR
Century 21 Pro-Team
Aurora IL Real Estate | Batavia Real Estate
Yorkville Real Estate

As stated above, I also removed those real estate directories. In your post you said it was rude to remove those links without telling the other party thats reciping with you. Back when doing reciprocal linking was OK and effective from an SEO side...your correct that it was a no no to remove links while the other party was still pointing at your site.

However...today (actually for quite sometime now) It is not a good idea to do recip's between agent sites and could actually hurt your site to do this. When I first started removing links...I would take 25 links, email all 25 and tell them I was removing their link and can they also remove my link as well. Then I would proceed to remove the link. I heard back from one person the whole time I was doing that. One link partner....period. I found that my time was being wasted and there was no way I was going to continue a practice that was no good anymore.

It's not up to me or any other agent to educate the entire real estate world about what is good and bad in the SEO world. Even if you were able to educate them...getting them to do something is an entirely different matter. So...I just removed those darn link pages across the board.

Even though you were not directing your response at me...I think someone should give you a response back. In the old days I would have agreed with you...but today no way. All of these agent to agent pages should be removed on the basis that its really not helping the end user and we all know why we were doing it in the first place. But there's no way I'm spending days on end to try and get these agents to stop linking to my sites. A very high percentage of them were solicited from the other side to begin with or from a service they hired to contact me. I've been turning them down for years. Hope this long response helps.

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Jerry Campbell, CRS, GRI
Muljat Group
Bellingham, WA 98225
Professional REALTOR for 15 years
Bellingham Real Estate | Whatcom County Real Estate | Bellingham Homes For Sale

My response was not aimed at you. However, I feel your rationale for not notifying your link partners of your removal is not a very good one.

Besides, I think a lot of people who do SEO know dang well why they didn't notify their former link partners. It's for the simple fact that their former partners will probably not catch the removal and a one-way will result. It's that simple.

It's like billing someone for 2 margaritas at Chili's when they only drank one and saying it's OK because they didn't catch it and everyone else is doing it. Doesn't wash with me.

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Eric Rogers - REALTOR
Century 21 Pro-Team
Aurora IL Real Estate | Batavia Real Estate
Yorkville Real Estate