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From what I get out of Rand's comment above, there's no existing penalty in Google's algorithm for reciprocal linking. So it's a great idea, and yes jumping on board with the single goal of beating your competitors will get you fast results. But those results might be short term if the reciprocal links you're involved with don't make sense logically. What happens if in a month the webspam team rolls out another Panda  focused on devaluing any reciprocal links that don't appear natural? Would you rather watch your competitors get washed off the first page, while you climb? Or join them in the rankings loss (and more importantly, traffic loss)?

Ahh I see read this prior to my morning coffee... Yes you are correct, don't know why I was thinking that the sites where going to be migrated... However, if 3 pages are on the 2nd page of Google for one keyword, doing a 301 redirect from 2 of the 3 pages to 1 page should help win.

EGOL, what is a signpost? I know I am supposed to know everything, but that is why I have you! Keep on own site... but share....signpost...? Robert

For the first site, it took 2 weeks and was successful on the first try.  I know exactly which links were suspect and detailed the removal of the ones under my control and my requests for removal of the others (only about 50% of which were deleted).  I think they considered that I reformed my spamming ways, and so lifted the penalty. The second site took three separate RRs over a period of about 2 months, each time more links were removed to satisfy them.   The site went from 600 root linking domains to about 150.

I really like this approach, and I think it is very beneficial. How do you use this approach on a topic that is not that interesting. You may get one or ever ten articles however I feel like this becomes redundant especially if all these article s are on the same site. For example if you had a client that was doing property management or apartment rentals, what would you write about? and how much of this can you create?

We received a few dozen links on a PR7 page.  Each of those links went to a different page on our website and each of those pages shot up the SERPs almost immediately - and held that new ranking.  So, multiple links on a single domain - or even on a single page can be very beneficial - if they hit different URLs on your website. However, footer links and blogroll links, all hitting the same URL on your website are known to deliver a fraction of the value compared to the same number of links on different domains.

Here an interesting article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-seo-value-from-your-affiliate-links Is it stil up to date and good practice to create a site for each affiliate and then use rel canonical to pass the link juice to the main content page? Can somebody give some more resources how to turn affiliate links to seo frendly links?

IMO its great to give content away in a boring niche. As long as it's going to a site where someone can benefit from it and guide them to your site.  How else do you plan on building external links to your site? Naturally? by creating great content and sharing it via social media (what if there is very low social for this topic)...

Outbound linking to credible sources is important. However, if your linked page is linking to the same page that's linking back to you, I think that would look like a 1 to1 recip link (albeit with an authoritative site) to the algos. If it's a great article, I would write a separate blog entry letting your customers know that you were mentioned on BBC with a link to the article. Like Matt said, it should always be helpful to your reader. I'm not sure that two pages linking to each other in an endless loop is helpful. That's my two cents (or pence if you're accross the pond).

Thanks for the responses guys. I know that you won't get the full link juice, but it looked like some weren't even getting seen.  That does explain a lower authority though. The transfer was done about 2 months ago.  I thought after the first month, things would be basically ironed out, but I'll just give it more time and build other links in the meantime. Thanks for your help!

I would agree with targeting Mountainbike.com or  www.Mountainbike.com

That's great, many thanks for your help Donnie.  Have a good day 

To be honest its difficult to come up with any name but there are several things you can consider... Search within the SEOmoz community... see what their activity rank is?... see how they perform in daily blog comments, in QnA section and select few... Talk to them...compare prices and services and i am sure you will find some one fit for you! Pro tip: Cheap prices usually offer cheap services...

Have you looked at our blog section on Link Building? We have a lot of posts there that talk about many different ways to earn valuable links.

@Donnie and @TheeDesign- Thanks for the great insights!

Thanks for the additional advice.

Google (matt Cutts) specifically talks about links on top hold more value than links on bottom. If you are concerned with those links on the top, I wouldn't IMO. Almost every major site including SEOMOZ places their links for login,register on the top right and their rankings are not touched.

If you are focused on generating local results, it is very important to have the geographic location in your keyword content.  In London, you should also look at the impact of neighborhood or "borough" or section of the city....listed with plumbing services. The Blog provides two opportunities: The first is keyword content. Google looks to your site to establish keyword relevancy. The blog provides you an opportunity to do that on a consistent basis. The second is related to linkbuilding.  Because relevant content has become so important, the blog can provide frsh content consistently to people that participate in discussions on the web...in the process you can earn links and listings from other blogs. In addition, good content can create some natural linking and viral sharing...this is the "linkbait" that you mention. Regardless, all of your strategies are sound. Here is a great article from SEOMOZ on a 6 month plan that is advanced but will give you solid detail on the subject:   http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-6-month-link-building-plan-for-an-established-website Hope this helps. Mark