I recently posted on a Joomla forum for feedback on my redesigned site. One of the many responses I got said that overall my site was great, very professional. They then proceeded to say the only thing he didn't understand the links page. Where they all companies I've done logos for? About 80% are companies I've worked for, the rest are link exchanges. Is there some reason link exchange would be frowned upon?
It does seem a bit unprofessional. Instead of calling it "links" i would call it "clients" and only use the ones who you have done work for.
If you are not going to place the reciprocal links on your main landing page, personally I wouldn't bother with them at all. Instead stick to blogging for links or posting in do follow forums like DP. All that will happen otherwise is that you will end up with a links page that has a higher PR than the rest of your site, and that to me is pointless.
You should focus on building one way links, google does not consider exchanging links as a good method of link building.
Perhaps you should call one page "partners" and the other "previous clients" or "examples of clients" or something similar.
Does anyone think Google isn't smart enough to figure out that everyone has stopped building "links" pages and are now building "partner" pages? I don't think it makes a difference what you call it, a links page is a links page. Try to focus on building one way links instead but don't worry that you'll get banned just because you have a couple links to sites that also link back to you. It's natural for two sites to link to each other, it happens all the time and it will not get you banned unless you abuse it excessively.
I'm still new to all of this. What do you mean "banned"? Most of my links are previous or existing clients so I think putting them on a separate page from my non-client links is a good idea.