SEO Tip of the day
When and Where to use Reciprocal Linking
I have always been very against reciprocal linking. The reasons are that a reciprocal link is obviously not natural. Search engines can tell which IP address a link comes from so a link from one IP back and forth to the same IP is heavily devalued.
Reciprocal linking undermines the fundamental page rank algorithm that Google's technology is based around. There was a time when reciprocal linking worked very well.
That being said it does have its place. The funamental thing to realise is that you should be creating content for site users, so you should also only be placing links if they are useful for site users.
If a site makes sense, like a partner site or related industry directory and authority site then a reciprocal link that is relevant is a good thing to have.
Having 99% of the links to your site as reciprocals highly devalues the weight of the links and looks very unnatural. With every algorithm update recips are being more and more devalued.
Stick to only highly relevant recips and keep the percentage reciprocal links of your total links to a minimum. Use 10% as a rough guidline of recips v total links.
The SEO Files Recomends
Only reciprocate a link where it is highly relevant and useful for site visitors.