There seems to be many schools of thought on this. There are those who say that reciprocal linking is still a good way to bring traffic to your site and boost your sites overall rating. There are others who say that it has lost its relevance and that one should focus more directory listings and pursuing good, quality inbound links instead. Finally, there are those who believe that not only are reciprocal links worthless but that they can actually have a negative effect on both your website's rank and its reputation. Personally I feel that reciprocal links, particularly relevant ones, still have their place, and deservedly so. They're still the backbone of most websites, especially the older ones. Forgetting about the esoteric world of Google algorithms or Page Rank for a second, a link is a link is a link. And the best type of link is a free one. If it brings traffic to your site then it can't be a bad thing can it? Still, like I said there's plenty of different views on this which was why I posted here in the first place, I'm curious to find out everyone's opinion.
Reciprocal links are a great way to increase traffic and site awareness <i>IF</i> and only if the other site is worth the bandwidth that it uses. If not, you're wasting your time and creating useless links. Just my $0.02.
I don't think so. Search engines filter out sites that use reciprocal links. It is best to focus on quality content. Then it may suprise you how many sites will link to you're site
Reciprocial links are not effective because google penalize website and it is time consuming,tedious,your site gives away PageRank,slow to get many links to your web site .
I hear that it's dead but that wouldnt make much sense, How many websites can convince other websites to give you one way links without wanting anything in return.
As long as your site/page content is very, very related to the other site/page, then reciprocal linking probably won't hurt or be penalized by Google. Do not link with unrelated content on other sites.
Yes, usasportstraining, but... what does you mean with "site/page" ? What is really important: "related pages" or "related sites"? Thank you
Probably sites in general, but pages specifically. Let's say your site is about basketballs, but you, for some reason, have a page about gerbils. If a site about gerbils is backlinking to your page about gerbils and vice versa, then it is a good thing. However, if you link exchange between the main pages of your sites, it could be viewed poorly by Google and discounted, offering you no benefit. <edit> Or a site with a page on gerbils is linking to your page about gerbils, and vice versa, then it is considered a good thing (or atleast not as bad of a thing). The site content in general greatly influences the power of it's individual pages. So, a site entirely about triathlon training <ahem!> would have a lot more impact for that topic, than just having one page on the subject.
Maybe Google frown upon it, or at the least want us to think they frown upon it - what of Yahoo and MSN though?
Create a page for each link, and call it something like: "Cool Site of the Day." Then talk about it, give it a short review. That's one of the ways around just flat out having a link exchange page. You will not only be safe with this method of link exchanging, but you will also be creating more pages, thus more keywords, and, more pages for even more ads, which, in turn, more money in your pocket.
Exactly right. Google looks for relevant sites that are linking to each other. Obviously, there's no real reason that a site about cars should be linked to a site about grass.