Once seen as a flawless way to enhance search rankings and traffic, reciprocal linking now has the potential to affect a website in both good and bad ways. The following list of “pros and cons” will help determine whether reciprocal linking is right for your website, while providing some tips on how to trade links more effectively.

PROS

1. Reciprocal linking increases the direct traffic between both websites involved, especially if they are about related subjects. This decreases reliance upon search engines and/or paid advertising, which is good for saving money and maintaining a more stable flow of traffic. It is best to avoid trading links with sites on completely different topics.

2. It may still improve search result rankings, particularly when the two sites are relevant to each other, it isn’t obvious that the linking is reciprocal, and both sites have good PageRank levels. Sometimes one site will receive more benefit than the other, based upon these factors – such as when a popular PR5 site exchanges links with a new PR0 or PR1 site.

CONS

The potentially bad effect of reciprocal linking is largely associated with search engine rankings, and has become more problematic in recent years. Website operators may want to specifically agree beforehand about what sort of links (“nofollow”, link text, etc.) they will use.

1. Some search engines, especially Google, now disapprove of reciprocal linking and may penalize the search rankings of sites that are involved (if detected) – unless the “nofollow” attribute is used in the links, which eliminates any good or bad impact upon rankings. Any linking (reciprocal or not) to sites that have been “banned” by the engines will have a bad effect on search rankings.

2. Linking to other web pages can distract visitors from your site, possibly causing them to forget about it. Using links that open in new windows can help limit this bad aspect of reciprocal linking. A link also “endorses” the other site to some extent, so you will want to examine it for offensive content, viruses, or other material which may reflect badly upon anyone who links to it.

The ability to increase traffic among the linked websites remains an undoubtedly good aspect of reciprocal linking, but its benefits regarding the search engines are no longer as clear. Regardless of this, links should only be traded with high-quality relevant websites, and it is best not to exchange them excessively.

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