Are reciprocal links of any value today?
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Does anyone still use the reciprocal link exchange technique and is it of any value?
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This is a dead link building strategy and can be dangerous nowadays (especially if not in the same niche) and can get both sites penalized, you should at very least nofollow one of the sites doing the linking.
Not recommended for boosting serps, might be viable for cross traffic if each site sells something the other does not for example.
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The first thing I would say to this is since penguin link profiles are under more scrutiny than ever and as such you really want to have a natural link profile. Realistically is it natural to have only inbound links? - no a natural link profile will have links flowing in both directions and as such some will be reciprocal. However you need to make sure that if you are doing a reciprocal link with a website then you linking back would add value to your visitors. If you are going to reciprocal link I would work to this principle and keep them to a minimal and then you should be ok. I do personally have two sites that I work on that are linking to each other and this hasn't caused any negative impact on my rankings as they both rank well, but the link makes sense and I haven't created sites just to link to each other.
If you are thinking of going down the route of offering links to other sites if they link to you purley to boost the flow of link juice and increase links to your site then I would stay away from this practice, as there are penguins swimming in those waters!!
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Reciprocal link exchange is mainly effective in two aspects, in link building and in traffic building. It is good if you get relevant and dofollow links. I think now very few people are using reciprocal link exchange.
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