Reputation, exactly. When I go to sites like NetMagazine or InstantShift I head straight over to their links and resources page because of their reputation. People determine whether link exchanges are good or bad based on how they use them. I can always tell a Ken Evoy Site-Sell website and they almost always have interesting unique content which allows them to use ads above the fold and practically smack you in the face! They earn that free pass by providing value first. . . no ads are even allowed before 25 pages of good content is there first - or something like that. They used to have a good link exchange program and probably still do. If you can get your site approved for Site-Sell's link exchange, that will only help your site climb up where they are.
Any single link duilding method is dangerous and not enough, variety of link building are more safe and natural
I believe two way linking is much better than other. I am searching link partner for my travel or immigration website
In my opinion , link exchange works less. And getting inbound links are very good to any site. Some times, your site rank may reduce due to link exchange. If you are getting from the relevant sites than it is not a problem. But , I suggest you to go with one way linking to your site. So, your ranks will be increased in google and you will get good traffic from the search engines soon.
Yes this is the best if you can do...but if you cought by google it will get spammed this is the problem..
It is more useful for your site to get direct one-way backlinks. You can buy links on the websites related to your topic. There is another way, but it's much harder. Make your website interesting and exciting, get +1000 visitors and other webmasters will be interested in linking to your site