Does reciprocal linking still work?

I been wondering about this for a while now.
I it worth building these reciprocal links?

I know that they are not as good as one way links but still... What do you have to say?

 

it still work but you have to link it with non-spamming sites.

 

Right, I think that's the hardest part, to find out which is spam site and which isn't.

 

yes, I agree, a while back I purchased a bunch of links, and got sandboxed by google, hated it, but that happens, I actually prefer recip linking, because it is actually more valid than paid links.

 

I’m not sure if this is true, but I heard somewhere that exchanging links between 3 sites is an effective route? Does Google notice this ?

 

I definitely think that search engines are able to detect 3 way and 4 way link exchanges.

I also think that the search engines pretty much ignore reciprocal linking these days.

My question is this:

Pretty much all the big sites employ SEO companies. A big part of this SEO is acquiring links. So if you are paying a SEO company to acquire you links, aren't you in fact buying links.
Isn't somebody who buys links directly simply eliminating the middleman?

I don't know. What I do know is that the following types of links have become pretty much useless in the last few years:
a. Signature links in forums
b. Links in do follow blog posts
c. The vast majority of directory links

I still think that links from writing and submitting articles can help, but only a little bit.

So where the heck are we supposed to get these links from?

Oh yeah, I forgot, I'm supposed to focus entirely on "good content" and wait for the links to come rolling in.

By the way, how many years is this supposed to take?

 

it works only if you're exchanging a few links ,and only with sites from your niche

 

That's why one way links was created, to avoid reciprocal linking. From what I understand it's what you want to avoid because Google considers it a link scheme and could have a negative effect.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

 

The only way I can see reciprocal linking being effective is if you are linking to a very popular site, non-spamming site, which is unlikely.

 

Reciprocal links are good if they are from the high pr & niche category website

 

Don't ever purchase links. Those who pay for links are punished by Google. Reciprocal Link is better, go with it.

 

I always focus on one way links personally and avoid reciprocal links, I find I get better results with my sites.

 

Reciprocal links are not inherently bad, but you should not focus your entire link building efforts on reciprocal links. One-way links are by far the most valuable kind of link, but if given the opportunity for a good, reciprocal link, then I certainly wouldn't turn it down. The important things are to make sure that you don't do reciprocal links with bad sites (as that could have a negative effect on your site) and I would make sure that I build a good mix of other types of links.