Reciprocal Linking is process of exchanging links with other sites of a similar nature or theme as an inexpensive way to increase website traffic and link popularity.

Developing a plan to increase the number of reciprocal links back to your website can help you bring more highly targeted traffic to your website as well as improve your ranking in the search engines.

Link popularity is becoming an increasing important criteria for better search engine ranking. By getting your link displayed on other website's Link directories around the world you are increasing the number of paths leading back to your websites, which in turn will increase the number of visitors to your site. The better your popularity, the better your ranking.

Getting lots of links to your site will increase your chances of getting your web page listed on one of the first few pages of search results returned by search engines. This is because most search engines take into account the number of backlinks to your website when deciding how to position your site.

It measures not only how many links point to a website, but the "quality" of the sites providing the links.

If you've been researching search engine optimization, I'm sure you've come across the term "PR", or "Page Rank". Page Rank is a number between 1 and 10 that measures not only how many links point to a website, but the "quality" of the sites providing the links. Please do not get obsessed with obtaining a high page rank. Because the search engines keep on changing their algorithms on a regular basis, it is almost impossible to keep up with their trends if you run a small website or series of websites. My advice is to concentrate on building good links that would benefit your visitors rather than becoming obsessed with page rank. You can achieve a consistent long term traffic flow by exchanging good, relevant links.

So how do you go about exchanging links in the first place? Chances are, you already know who your competitors are, and which sites will complement your own without being direct competitors. If you find a site you like one you think your visitors would be interested in, send an email to the webmasters of the sites you wish to exchange links with. Most webmasters in my experience are more than happy to exchange links, since they also realize the importance of shared traffic.

Once you start getting a few link partners, keeping track of them all and continuously updating your web pages with all the new links, whilst checking that your link is still own their website can be quite a bit of work. The reciprocal linking program I use for this is LinkMachine, but I have also included some other Link Exchange Programs and Tools here.

If you use a tracking tool e.g. HyperTracker, you'll be able to see how much traffic is coming your way from your new contacts. After a few weeks, you may find that the balance of traffic is unequal – if you are sending a site far more traffic than you are receiving in return, it may be an idea to reduce the prominence of that particular link – but try to keep in touch with all your contacts.

To exchange links with me, just click on the "Link Partners" button at the bottom of my home page.