"Subject related" sites — that does help to reduce the danger. However, the danger still exists, since there's no guarantee that sites in your niche won't sell out and become, say, a porn site under the new owner. That actually happened to me. A link to a religious site ended up being a link to a lewd site. Not the best advertising for my religious-themed site, as you can imagine! Fortunately, a helpful reader noticed that link and brought it to my attention, so that I could delete it.
Reciprocal linking is one of the most disputable SEO questions. The problem is that it is two-fold in nature. First, reciprocal links are natural being the essence of the Internet like linking overall.Secondly, it is the easiest way to manipulate your rankings by engaging in numerous link exchanges.
Sorry it was a mistake earlier I meant to say page one and dropped to page 4, Im not entirely sure if it was this though. I know we had a big drop in June and ended up being unranked in July, this was roughly around the time I got rid of the recipricol links page Id created. Im seriously conseridering re doing the recipricol link capaign but dont want to jepodise my site in the future