Perhaps they should have told the whole truth? Indiscriminate reciprocal linking is frowned upon by the search engines, but careful tactical reciprocal linking benefits everybody and not only is it a good way of getting "quick traffic" it's a good way to get fairly stable traffic - I have websites that still get traffic from links I swapped over two years ago, and this traffic has steadily increased over the years (both ways).



Getting good quality links is far more important than getting lots of links, so here are seven tips for getting decent reciprocal links to your websites:

1) Don't worry about a website's PR (i.e. Google PR) because many websites end up with an inflated PR through their own reciprocal linking campaigns. What's the point of linking to a high PR website which receives very little traffic?

You need to link to a website which gets a lot of traffic, so do a little research using Alexa.com - create a spreadsheet to record the traffic stats of likely link partners - you want to make sure their traffic is either stable or increasing (so you will be maintaining these stats for the life of your link partnership, hence the spreadsheet).

2) Only link to websites of a similar or related theme. I have found that linking to all and sundry might increase the traffic to a website but doesn't necessarily increase earnings. For example, a visitor who clicks through to your website from a reciprocal link on a similarly themed website is looking for information, which makes them far more inclined to click on a Google Adsense ad if it looks interesting to them.

3) Only link to partners who use categorized link pages or use a categorized link directory (unless they have less than 10 links in total). Your link must be easy to find, which means it needs to appear in a logical, orderly and easy to search system.

4) Never add your link to a page with more than 20 links - less than 10 is even better. If there is more than one page of links for a particular category, don't bother adding your link - people hardly ever look past page one?

You would be better off finding a related category for your website which has fewer links. For example - you might have a website on diamond rings... When the time comes to add a link to a reciprocal directory nearly everybody will add their link to the diamond jewelry category, but not many people think of engagement rings, or wedding rings or bridal jewelry.

5) Never link to a website which tries to hide the link to their link pages. You're doing this for traffic so your link must be easy to find. You will get a lot more traffic from a website which has a link to their links/resources near the top of the webpage (or within the normal navigation menu system), and hardly any from a link at the bottom of the page.

6) Your link is an advertisement for your website, so spend a bit of time writing a good one. You need a title which gets attention and a description which arouses interest or gets the reader curious.

7) You are engaging in a reciprocal link, so reciprocate. Make sure that your linking system allows your reciprocal link partners to apply the previous six tips?

If you apply these seven tips to your reciprocal linking while being very selective in your choice of link partners you can increase the flow of targeted traffic to your websites which in turn will increase your website income.