Reciprocal Link

A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. For example, Tom and Bob have websites that are both about health care. If Bob’s website have links to Tom’s website, and Tom’s website have links to Bob’s website, the websites are reciprocally linked.

Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories, in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process because Google uses link popularity algorithms, defined as the number of links that led to a particular page and the anchor text of the link, to rank websites for relevancy.

Another advantage of reciprocal linking is that it you don’t require to go to sites that are not relevant to you. You only link to the sites that provide similar services as yours. By establishing a relation with only relevant sites you can pull potential customers to your site and improve your rankings. This usually does not happen when you are linked to non-relevant sites.
In case of reciprocal link building, you always have a reason to explain why you want to link to that particular site. You can also convince the webmaster of a particular site by emphasizing on the fact that reciprocal links will benefit both.

Above all, the websites with which reciprocal links are established has a better page ranking that means they have more visitors than yours. So, it is likely that it will greatly help in driving traffic to your site.

No doubt, reciprocal linking is cost-effective but it is not above disadvantages. Unlike other processes like article and press release syndication, reciprocal linking does not give you external links. In case of article or press release syndication, you get new external links and if the content published is of good quality you are likely to get lot more new traffic to your site. This way you can improve your search engine ranking and get exponential links.

Again, in case of reciprocal linking the popularity and performance of your site indirectly depends upon the site you are linked to. Often the sites with whom you want to establish a link has a higher rank than your site, so it becomes difficult sometimes in convincing the webmasters that are very strict about their rules.

Despite its disadvantages, reciprocal link building greatly helps in enhancing your website’s performance.