Reciprocal linking strategies have been used by webmasters for a long time. This style of linking is still an important strategy and, when used properly, will increase the search engine rankings for your website. There are some unethical reciprocal linking strategies out there, but these should be avoided at all cost. Do not let yourself be drawn into any "quick fix approach" to marketing your website.

Reciprocal linking is like a joint enterprise between two or more websites. The basic premise is that you communicate with another website owner and agree to provide a link to his or her site, as long as they agree to link back to yours. The philosophy here is that, "if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours".

There are essentially four strategies used for building reciprocal links.

1. The first method is the long way. With this first strategy, you send emails to the webmasters of any sites you are interested in linking with. The webmaster will either agree or disagree to do the exchange (or they may just ignore your email altogether). If the webmaster agrees, then you just exchange links and you are done.

2. Method 2 would involve using one of the many software programs out there which essentially semi-automate the reciprocal linking process. I certainly recommend the software method as it will save you a huge amount of time. Also, the software should be able to check that the links coming back to you from your partner sites remain active. If you had to continually check for active links manually, it would prove to be extremely time consuming. If a partner site link becomes inactive for some reason, then there is no benefit for you to remain linked to them. Remember that websites come and go, so you need to have a way to accurately monitor your exchanged links.

3. A third method involves purchasing reciprocal links (By the way, you can also purchase one way links). I would urge caution with this method. The search engine crawlers are becoming very clever these days. Search engines such as Google tend to frown upon purchased links.

4. A fourth strategy would include using a reciprocal link exchange service. These consist of networks of hundreds of webmasters with sites on a variety of topics. With these services, all the member websites involved will trade links with each other. The trouble here is that you will end up with a lot of unrelated reciprocal links. The search engines really don't like these services and they have sophisticated ways of detecting them.

One very important consideration when gathering reciprocal links is that you only want to hook up with sites that are related to yours. For instance, if your website is centered around affiliate marketing programs and you exchange a link with a web site on cake baking styles, then that link exchange is simply not relevant. If you start linking to unrelated sites, the search engines will consider this to be "link spamming". Do not link spam, as this will destroy your credibility in the long run and possibly get your site banned.

In summary then, reciprocal linking is still a good SEO strategy if done properly. It should be carried out in conjunction with other SEO marketing tactics such as one way linking, key word optimization, blogging and article marketing, just to name a few. Good luck with your reciprocal linking campaign.