I have another question.

If indeed reciprocal links are going to continue to hold value for a site despite some of the predictions I've heard, I have a question about templates.

I am somewhat mechanically challenged. I use XsirePro for building sites. Uploading a template that matches the rest of my site is above my level of expertise right now. I am looking into using a different program to manage my links and they provide default templates.

I think I can make some changes to the template so that the color scheme will co-ordinate with the rest of my site, even though it won't match the other pages. I have been told that if the template is not an exact copy of your other pages, that the search engines will penalize you. Is this true?

The link pages would be set up in categories and sub categories and I would restrict the number of links on a page. I was thinking of 40 as a good number. Any further ideas on this?

Thanks for any help
Myfunzrlo

Reciprocal are helpfull when they made naturally...
never try to BIT google algorithum is WISE idea.

Reciprocal are helpfull when they made naturally...
never try to BIT google algorithum is WISE idea.

So I'm left with a big fat "Huh?" on this response...

I mean, recip links require active participation by two parties - that's not "natural"

Natural implies I simply place a link from my site to yours because I think it's worth doing so.

...and never try to BIT Google's algorithm is a WISE idea is totally lost on me - sorry...

If indeed reciprocal links are going to continue to hold value for a site

My prediction is that they're not going to hold value in the future: Google is already discounting or ignoring them altogether.

I was thinking of 40 as a good number

It depends on the number of links going to that page; there always needs to be more incoming than outgoing links on a page. That said, as long as you have more than 41 links going in then 40 might be okay. But personally I try to keep it under 20 outgoing links on all pages of a site.