What is Reciprocal Linking? Learn About Link Exchanges

Reciprocal linking is a practice commonly referred to as a 'link exchange.' It is basically when site 'A' links to site 'B' and then site 'B' links back to site 'A.' In the past reciprocal linking was one of the best methods for getting free backlinks and moving up in search engine rankings. Today, however, reciprocal linking is bad and Google may actually penalize you for using this practice.

Google's algorithms have come along ways since reciprocal linking was first born. They are now keen to this practice and give little value to backlinks that exchanged in this fashion. In addition, Google may actually penalize your website if they believe you are doing this intentionally with the aim of increasing your position in search engine results. Google has publicly said that it will penalize websites which attempt to manipulate search engine positions with methods such as this. Fortunately there is another similar way to exchange links with similar websites and not incur the wrath of almighty Google.

This is a method widely known as a '3-way link exchange'. Basically how this works is you get three websites, instead of the two involved in a reciprocal link exchange, for your little link love pass-around. Site 'A', we'll call it, will provide a backlink to site 'B'. Site 'B', in turn, will link to site 'C' and finally site 'C' will link back to site 'A'. As you can see this method is very simple but at the same time it bypasses the problems with a reciprocal link exchange. Each website gets one back link and provides one backlink, just as with a reciprocal link exchange. What doesn't happen, however, is that the websites do not directly exchange links with each other. This allows each website to provide and receive a backlink which is treated by Google as a normal backlink.

A couple of other things to keep in mind when doing a 3-way link exchange are that you want to link with relevant websites. Relevancy not only provides for more powerful backlinks but it also makes your linking appear far more natural. Keep in mind also that you are helping out a potential competitor, or at least someone who targets the same traffic as you. Because of this you should never be on the short end of the stick. Always make sure the site which is linking to you has at least as much traffic and as high of a PageRank as the site which you link to, otherwise you are helping more than you are being helped.