Linking to my Site so I should Link Back?

[aua]

I remember hearing a few years ago that it was a good practice to link back to a site that was linking to you.

My company's site was referenced and linked to in a news article. The news company has an above average domain authority, which is pretty good for my company's backlink profile. Is it still or was ever a "best practice" to link back to this website/domain?

I feel like linking back was a best practice, but when I try to search this, all I get back is backlinking 101 and backlinking articles. Nothing really answering my question straight forward.

Thanks for any help.

[Singularitie]

Hi Aua,

The word you may have been looking for is "reciprocal" linking (you link to me so I link to you).

Reciprocal linking isn't/wasn't really a best practice for SEO it's something that SEO's used to do because it was easier to get a link that way.

This was used a lot before the conversation in SEO (in a broad sense) really turned towards providing value instead of just trying to game Google.

It's actually defined by Google as a no-no (if used excessively) on their support pages:
"The following are examples of link schemes which can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results:......
_Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking" _

In example it used to work like this;

I reach out to a small business in my area who I want a link from. I explain it's for my SEO and that the more relevant local links I have the more trusted I appear to Google.

In lieu of providing any real value or reason to link to my website (such as killer content that might be useful to the businesses users) I would offer to link back to them if they linked to me. That way, both of our websites were getting a link and Google will love us both.

To summarise;

• No it wasn't best practice (never was as far as I am aware)
• You don't need to link back to the article