Reciprocal links are one of the most common and most effective forms of website promotion. When sites trade links, they both benefit by sharing some traffic directly and getting noticed more favourably by the search engines.

Reciprocal Links help you improve search engine ranking and generate more traffic to your web site. The quality and quantity of reciprocal links with other web sites allows you to increase your link popularity. Increasing your link popularity will drive more traffic to your web site as more visitors will click through to your web site and better search engine ranking will result bringing more targeted traffic. With the increasing competition, getting a good ranking in the search engines is important. If you really want a high rank position with the search engines and more traffic to your web site, you need to work out a focused linking strategy to establish reciprocal links with other web sites. I know that exchanging links is not simple and take time, but is the best time investment you will ever do.

The basic concept is simple - you link my site, I'll link yours and we'll both get an increase in traffic. I have exchanged many links in my web-based career. Here are 10 tips from my experience ….

1. Find the right site to do a reciprocal link exchange with. Define the kinds of sites with which you want to trade links. These sites are normally in your website's category of interest, or sites that you feel your visitors might find interesting.

2. If you are at the beginning of promoting your site and want to see results soon, exchange links with popular and quality web sites. This doesn’t mean that popular web sites will accept that, but you have to try. Don’t hesitate. Lots of popular web sites that are in another category of interest, maybe accept exchange link with you. It’s your decision …

3. When you contact the webmaster of the other site, you should be kind. Tell him that you run a site that has a similar topic and describe your site a bit. Say that you like his site and have included a link to it in your site (give him the address of the page where the link is), then ask him to return the favour by linking to your site. If you never get a reply or your proposal gets rejected, just forget it and find another site.

4. Never be disappointed! There are a lot of webmasters who will exchange links with you.

5. Be patient! With hundreds of thousands of sites out there, it takes time and efforts to find and choose web sites for reciprocal links. Keep working.

6. If another webmaster asks you to exchange link, give him an answer. If you deny, explain why. If you like the content of that web site then add the link. Every link is useful.

7. Exchange as many links as you can. Don’t be afraid to swap links with competitor websites. This is not going to hurt your business. World wide web is a huge area. Internet has space for everyone.

8. Don't remove your link without contacting the webmaster of the other site first. Some webmasters agree to exchange reciprocal links, add your link o¬n their site and after a few days/weeks they remove it without noticing you. You should check the site of your partner every now to see if he's keeping his part of the deal. If he is not, contact the guy and kindly ask him to explain why your link has disappeared. If you don't get a satisfactory explanation, remove the link to his site from your site and find another partner.

9. Prefer text links rather than graphics as this would be more search engine friendly. If you want to make your site more impressive and satisfy your partner, add a graphic link too, but don’t overdo it.

10. Your reciprocal link request is more likely to be taken seriously if you have your own domain! Some webmasters may not even wish to trade reciprocal links with websites with URLs based o¬n other providers' domains, fearing the sites are not high quality. If you are serious about your website, consider getting your own domain. It costs some money, but the cash spent is well worth it when you realize how much better your website will be perceived in the eyes of your visitors.

Never forget …. The traffic that reciprocal links generate is FREE!!!