There seems to be a lot of bad-mouthing about reciprocal linking nowadays by SEO “gurus” and amateurs alike, most notably in the various internet forums.

Reciprocal links, according to the naysayers, are virtually worthless because they supposedly do not help your search rankings or pass Google PageRanks to your site.

While no one really knows how search engines factor reciprocal links into search ranking calculations, let’s suppose that the naysayers are right– that is, reciprocal links provide no SEO benefits whatsoever. Should we then abandon the practice of reciprocal linking altogether?

Not a chance!

Reciprocal linking is a perfectly natural and legitimate traffic-building technique that predates the search engines themselves. To abandon the practice simply to satisfy certain fears or assumptions about how a search engine works is unnatural and potentially unethical. That search engines cannot handle reciprocal links properly reveals a shortcoming in their algorithms, not in the practice of reciprocal linking itself.

From my years of internet marketing experience, reciprocal links are an invaluable source of highly targeted direct traffic. Some of my sites are receiving hundreds of visitors a month through my link partners. Best of all, the traffic is all free. While I could have bought these clicks through various pay-per-click campaigns, which I do heavily anyway, I save hundreds of dollars a month just by trading links with relevant sites.

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