Why reciprocal link popularity does not work

I am sure you have heard by now about an approach to SEO called reciprocal link popularity. Where 2 webmaster will cross link their sites together to gain a boost in their rankings. I want to explain why this concept does not work and for most websites it’s really a huge waste of time.

In the most basic terms trust rank detects sites that cross link to each other and basically cancels them out, in some cases very powerful sites will still pass some power.

Of course there is a lot more to this, are the sites compatible? Can you correlate a connection between site 1 and site 2? Thus a site for a local plumber probably should not cross link with a porn site.

Or if you look at the Stanford paper it specifically talks about linking with a bad seed, a site with a spam status. By their paper, if you link with a spammy site you may feel the pinch of the link.

You are much better off sponsoring a site within your industry that is not a competitor and would be happy to talk about your products or services. If you have a few hours to blow, you may want to look at this paper. I found it very insightful.