Reciprocal linking is practiced by a vast number of SEO / webmasters around the globe for a long time. This helped to get better ranking and backlinks for the websites in the initial stages, but as time progress reciprocal linking was started being used in the most unethical way and gradually search engine (especially Google) started cutting down on many sites which offered reciprocal linking services in an aggressive way. Many of the link exchange sites got penalized by Google in a really bad way. As per my experience, since then the link exchange stuff does not seem to work and many webmasters stopped wasting their valuable time on link exchange. But that doesn’t mean that reciprocal links have lost all its value.
Even now many of the companies are giving much importance to link exchange strategies and convinces the client that link exchange is the ultimate thing for a successful SEO campaign. It has been found out that Google red flag the sites which exceed a particular amount reciprocal links. But it the fact is also that, if you have reciprocal links from quality website, it won’t harm you either. But the debate still continues and it is better to stay away from link exchange with spammy, irrelevant and low quality sites. If you want to do link exchange, here are some of the things that need to keep in mind.
1) Check the quality of the site that you wish to exchange links.
2) Check the relevancy of the site.
3) Check the page rank of the page, where your link is supposed to be placed.
4) Try to maintain a particular limit for the number of backlinks for your site.
5) Check the age of the website with which you wish to do link exchange.
These are only a few things, but there are many more which depends upon the nature of the website. But if we keep the above points in mind, it would help us in getting better rankings. After all we must not forget that it is the quality, not quality that counts in the end.
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