Website owners, especially new website owners, tend to turn to this kind of linking strategy to help get them indexed in search engines or to just simply start gathering up links that point to their website.  While this used to be a relatively decent way of gathering incoming links not too long ago, the value of trading links with someone today has diminished.

If someone requests to “trade links” with you, they’re essentially saying “If you put my website link on your site, I’ll put your link on mine.”

For example, if you have a website that talks about landscaping and you’d like to get more links pointing to that site, you’d do some searches in Google or whatever search engine you choose to find other sites related to your topic of landscaping.

You might find sites on plowing gardens, growing flowers, organic gardening, plants, etc.  You would then contact each of these sites and see if they’d be willing to link to you if you in turn linked to them.

Given all of the additional linking strategies you can use, reciprocal linking should be one of your last resorts to gathering links.  That being said, it can still be an effective strategy so long as you keep your reciprocal links to a small percentage of actual links to your site.

Here are some tips to follow:

1. Keep your reciprocal links to a small percentage of overall links coming to your site.  If you currently have 100 links pointing to your site, make sure that only around 10 or less of those are reciprocal.
2. Keep any reciprocal linking strategy on-topic.  Don’t link just for the sake of linking, make sure that whomever you decide to trade links with that their site is on a related topic that would be beneficial to your site visitors.
3. Be sure the site you want to trade links with has some kind of PageRank.  Obviously, the higher the better but any kind of PageRank at all means that the site has been around long enough to receive visits from Google.
4. Don’t start off your linking strategy by trading links with other sites.  Instead work first on getting one-way links and then blend in a reciprocal linking strategy.
5. If you do find a site you’d be willing to trade links with, look first to see if they have a spot where you can submit your site first.  If so, see where your link will be located.  If you’re link will be listed on a page that houses dozens of other links or worse still, is a page called “links”, you’d do your site well by looking for another site to trade links with.  Oftentimes pages labeled “links” or pages that consist of dozens of links don’t fare well in the search engines and thus won’t do you much good.
6. Contact the site owner of a site you want to trade links with and ask if you can get a link on one of their interior pages, preferably all by yourself or at least with few links already contained within it.

All in all, reciprocal linking isn’t inherently “bad” but it shouldn’t be your first choice when trying to gather incoming links.

1. PageRank is not the be-all-end-all.  As a matter of fact, the PageRank of a page that you see is rarely the real PageRank of someone’s web page and should be merely used as an indicator.
2. SEO and The Meta Keyword Tag are not one in the same.  The Meta keyword tag is used within your web page’s code and tells the search engines what keywords you’re targeting for that page.  Just because you put keywords in this tag does not mean you’ve optimized your site.
3. There is no need to submit your site to the search engines.  The search engines will find you on their own and you can help them by getting a link from another web site that is already indexed in the search engines.  Preferably one that gets visited on a regular basis.
4. Learn to link bait!  Link baiting (while sounding like something illegal) is really nothing more than writing something that others find interesting and useful and that they’ll want to link to.  Lists are good for linkbait.
5. No, you cannot rank well overnight for a competitive keyword phrase.
6. SEO is an on-going contstant process.  You simply don’t “optimize” and then move on.  You must keep at it; the search engines are ever-evolving and you should be too.
7. If at all possible, don’t design your site without considering all of the SEO aspects to it first.  It’s easier to have your plan laid out in front of you rather than having to fix items as they come along.
8. Use your main keywords in your title tag.  This is a simple but often overlooked strategy.
9. Use a sitemap on your site. If you’re not, you should get to work building one.
10. Understand RSS and how to use it to your benefit.  RSS should not only be limited to your blog.
11. Know who your competitors are.
12. Use an analytics program for your site so that you have access to your websites stats.  Google analytics works well and its free if you have a Google account.
13. Do your keyword research and start working with terms easy to rank well for first.
14. Don’t try to shortcut the process (use techniques that could harm your site).  Be patient and it will be all worth your while.  Try to shortcut the process and you’re playing with fire.