Say you start reading a blog, on a subject that interests you. Half way through, the author starts talking about XYZ product, saying it really helped him out. The product sounds interesting, and it certainly sounds like it worked well for the author. But then you notice the link to the product is an affiliate link.
What do you think now? It may well be that the product was genuinely useful to the blog author, and it may well still be of interest to you, and you may still click it. But now you have a big warning sign in your head “maybe this guy just recommended the product because he gets paid if I buy it”
By contrast, if you had found the same link with no affiliate link, you would have no concern and you would believe that this author genuinely likes and recommends this product, with no ulterior motive. A non-affiliate link is therefore more valuable to your product-purchasing decision than an affiliate link; it is worth more “votes”.
You think all that because you are intelligent, and you have been around long enough to know that people often try and sell you things just to make money for themselves, and not because it will benefit you in any way. You know that there’s a chance the author just said it was great because he wants to make more money, not because it really is great.
Well guess what, Google is not dumb either, and they have been around a while too. It’s obvious to anyone that a reciprocal link has a strong likelyhood of an ulterior motive. Maybe the recommendation is still valid, but, just like the affid example above, it comes with a warning “this link exists not just for my benefit, but for their benefit too, treat it with a pinch of salt”. So its value is discounted – how much, who knows, but it’s not a trivial amount.
No hard feelings, but adding the aff links into the equation is irrelevant.
Just telling you what I know to be true, but what you believe is up to you and I don’t care either way.
Well, I’ve done testing on my network as well. I’ve been doing so since 2002 and my conclusions are apparently opposite to yours.
However, we are getting off topic into SEO strategies and SE Myths and facts. I have no intention to try and convince you in my believes and i’m sure this is true vice versa.
The question asked was:
Is there any point to relevant but reciprocal links of the same PR or is it just a waste of outgoing link?
I can say yes a 100 times while you keep saying No, but we will be both just wasting our time and worst, we will not really answer this question.
So far, we have both gave our points of view. This should me more than enough for others to decide. getting deeper into this debate is worthless.