Does this lose link value?

[AHC_SEO]

I have a link to my site from a post on an online forum. I now want to include the forum in a blog post about good industry-related e-forums. If I link to them in this article, will I lose the value from the link on the post in their forum, and could it be seen as spammy?

[ClaytonJ]

Good question, I am not sure anyone knows the secret sauce - but in my experience It comes down to ratios... so if you have 100 back-links and all 100 of those back-links have a reverse back link - then the site would be at high risk of a penalty...

But if it is a one off then it is of little consequence.  Why don't you just nofollow the reverse link?

Also no data on it, but I think google devalues the original link if you reverse it... hence we avoid like the plague... if a high quality link.

[donford]

Hi Trevor,

In general no you don't lose link juice for reciprocal linking. Why? because the original practice of evaluating the value of a website factored in how many other domains were linking to it. While that is still true today many other things also factor into the ranking now. Had this not been true you would have never seen the rise of "link rings" and "link pools", and ultimately Google penalizing these sites with Panda and Penguin.

The key here is as it always should be, does X site deserve a link from you? Which means, does putting that link on your site give your users any additional value? If the answer is yes, then by all means link to it. On the other side of the coin, that website should have asked the same question about your site, does their users gain any benefit by them linking to you? You should hope the answer is yes.

If both sites benefit from the mutual link, there shouldn't be any problem. If however, as John Cross suggested it becomes a pattern, then you can suffer a penalty.

I hope that helps,

Don

[AHC_SEO]

Thanks for your responses. It would definitely be beneficial to users, so I may just get on and do it. It is a good quality link though, hence my consternation.