Reciprical link location -- home page or deep page?
 

When building reciprocal links, where do you include them on your site?

I know Google favors deeper links, so my thinking is to include a links page under a new directory. For example, mysite(dot)com/partners/links.html for the link exchanging.

But wouldn't this kind of SEO effort only increase the page rank of that specific page, and not the home page mysite(dot)com ? In other words, would this only increase google traffic to mysite(dot)com/partners/links.html, and not mysite(dot)com ?

Getting more traffic to mysite(dot)com/partners/links.html is not going to make me any more sales.

better to put in at home page since this is the first page seen by the viewer

Assuming the reciprocal link exchange is to improve page rank, why would it matter if my readers can see the links? I'm not talking about a traffic exchange, more of a page rank exchange in order to increase google search traffic.

It is a reciprocal link, so not sure the type of gain that gives on the back pages to be honest.

But with everything else combined; assuming you build up more relevance to that page, have decent internal linking and your trades are highly niched... It should pickup some fresh listings, if anything - I can't see it hurting more than gaining.

in the footer

Consider reciprocol links useless. They negate each other and clearly indicate an agreement between the two sites to attempt to boost inbound links.

It depends where second side has them (and of course what they want). I prefer if possible place it on page that is not linked from them but with good value.

Being a noob, take my advice with a grain of salt. The recip links aren't that important; put them in the bottom. All they have to do is exist so when your site gets crawled by SEs, they're included.

No one really surfs for porn, and then clicks on those links instead of the video or the pics. When you do recips, you don't agree to send them traffic. You simply agree to link to them. They don't tell you where. So, I'd put the most lucrative links on top, and the obligatory ones at the bottom.

Egon

I forgot to mention another thing. Server Side Includes (SSI) or PHP's include.

I have a template with my recip links and I use SSI or PHP's equivalent to insert them into submissions. This is for so when you have to edit a lot of pages, you have to edit the recip links only in one place.

Most webmasters want it only on front page or no trade.

top level abc trades seem to work best. depends on what you're trying to achieve.