Linking is a powerful strategy used to get noticed in the SERPs. For new sites, reciprocal linking can be a great way to get the site noticed and indexed by the search engines. It also gives you an opportunity to learn what’s involved in the linking process between two sites.
Reciprocal linking is whereby site A points to site B and site B reciprocates the link by linking back to site A.
This can be used to create a list of resources that would be useful to your visitors.
The value of reciprocal links is believed to be lesser than previously. This is because it is easier to detect such an arrangement and can be construed as a method to artificially inflate search engine rankings.
If a site has value, you should link to it regardless of whether it links back to you.
While it is great to have a lot of sites linking to you, you need to be careful about linking to bad neighborhoods. Linking to bad neighborhoods will get your site penalized. Therefore, not all request for links to be reciprocated should be honored. Visit the site and check it out thoroughly.
You’ll generally want to avoid getting links from adult, pharmacy, and gambling sites unless your site is of that nature. Having those kind of links not only reflects badly on your site, it might also result in search engine penalties because many use questionable black-hat SEO techniques which you’ll want to avoid like the plague.
A more in-depth discussion on types of sites considered bad-neighborhoods and what to look out for will be covered in a future article.