Reciprocal links are links with other sites, which are generally
related to the theme of your website. The concept is simple you link
to a site, and that sites webmaster returns the favour and links back
to your site.

This method of traffic building is very important and its free, its a great part of your web design strategy and is simply a matter of contacting the right webmasters and getting the right links. However a full blown 'link-hunt' can be time consuming but the benefits it can bring are huge.

Reciprocal Links & The Search Engines

Reciprocal links are becoming a major factor in search engine optimization and web design strategies. More and more search engines are interested in the number and quality of links pointing to your site. The more links, the more important the search engines think your site must be. However, it is not as simple as that. 1 link from a quality site can have a bigger benefit to your site than 50 links from sites that no-one ever visits.

Besides the link itself pointing to your site (which is the quickest way to get indexed at Google and the method we recommend rather than manual submission), the text used in the link is vitally important. Make sure that the words in the link are keywords which reflect the content of your site. This can give you a massive boost in search engine rankings if done properly.

Summary of the importance of getting quality reciprocal links:

Increased traffic from the links themselves
Links from thematically similar sites help increase Page Rank at Google, and importance in many other search engines
Link text from site linking to your own can boost relevancy of your site if your site contains those words.
A branding boost if your links appear on high traffic sites.

Don't get banned

When search engines revealed the importance of inbound links to a site's perceived importance, link farms sprang up all over the place. A link farm is basically a collection of links on a web site - a place where you could add your site, after all, the more links pointing to your site the better, right? Wrong. Search engines like Google quickly began penalising sites that were listed in the most notorious link farms. Not only were sites PR ZEROD, they were oftern banned from the Google index altogether.

For the search engines, the only type of inbound link that is acceptable, is a link from a site with similar content to your own. So if you are selling inkjet cartridges, don't ask webmasters of clothes sites for a link. Keep your link requests to your own niche. the tighter you keep it, the more chance you have of Google (and other search engines) looking favourably on your site.

The process of exchanging links can be a very time-consuming and tedious job. Fortunately we have found a piece of software which helps automate the process while not upsetting the search engines. Like any other piece of software though, it can be abused. You must keep to the guide lines of their manual. Best of all, they have a free trial version.