How To Make Reciprocal Links Work For You?
By Bruce Hearder

Reciprocal links are one of the most controversial topics in the linking business today. The opinions usually range from those who are huge fans of this technique to those that condemn it because it tends to bring penalties from search engines. What is actually the truth? As usual, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

Understanding how reciprocal links actually work is rather easy. Site "A" links to site "B" and then in return site "B" links back to site "A". However as with all simple things, reciprocal linking is never simple. Why? Let’s analyze why a webmaster would want to exchange links in the first place. The answer comes in an instant. Traffic obviously. Traffic obtained from visitors who happen to click on that particular link and traffic from search engines who tend to show first sites with great popularity (sites with many inbound links). Well, if this procedure is so helpful why are people so reluctant to use it? Actually they rarely are, so it is not uncommon to see webmasters negotiate contracts for as much as 100 links at a time. Something must be wrong here, because for every 100 incoming links, there are supposed to be 100 outgoing links.

Intuitively I think that you have already understood the problem behind reciprocal linking. Over usage can lead to not so very pretty sites. But the main problem is another. Search engines do indeed tend to penalize the excess usage of this sort of method. However reciprocal linking is not explicitly penalized, unethical reciprocal linking is. We’re finally getting somewhere. The basic premise of search engines is the fact that links are supposed to be natural. What is a natural link you might ask? Well, it is quite simple. If two sites with approximately the same topic do a link exchange, those links will be considered organic, as they tend to add value to both sites. However, when two totally unrelated websites link to one another, the result will be two artificial links, which although on the short will bring a raise in the SERP (search engine rank position), on the long term will bring some sort of penalty.

These are the two main rules for reciprocal linking: use it to obtain some quality but do not overuse it and secondly make the reciprocal link exchange with sites that have a similar content to yours. Relevancy and keeping the usage of this technique to a reasonable amount can truly yield some impressive results. I know that the temptation to overuse this method is great, but try thinking on the long term.