Can you help me understand the cautions regarding reciprocal links?

The rule about reciprocal links relates to links between blogs or websites.

Google uses a variety of measures to assess the value of a Hub, blog or website. One major criteria is the number of people who link TO it (a backlink). Their algorithm sees every backlink as a 'vote' in favour of your Hub, which worked in the early days of the internet - but over time, website owners started to find ways to artificially inflate their backlinks.

Google isn't stupid, so it's always trying to tighten the algorithm so it doesn't count fake backlinks. One widespread trick was for two webmasters to say, "you backlink to me, I'll backlink to you" - so nowadays, Google immediately assumes that's suspicious, and discounts the value of the links.

Linking between your Hubs, with your Twitter account, and on Facebook is different because Google will probably recognize they all belong to you anyway.

Thanks for answering Marisa! That was very helpful - I always learn a lot from you!

Thanks fordie for answering as well. I think I have the concept now.

Reciprocal links now apparently add less value. You would therefore be better off working out where you want the traffic and pointing other sorces to there as incoming-only links.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.