Reciprocal Linking Isn't Dead

People keep saying it, and I for one am tired of hearing it. "Reciprocal linking is dead". Or "Reciprocal linking doesn't work anymore."

Nonsense. A lot of the people who think that reciprocal linking doesn't work just suck at it.

Here's the deal with reciprocal linking, and it's not complicated at all:

Don't link to websites that suck, and don't link to websites your audience won't be interested in.

You don't want websites that suck linking to you, and you don't want to link to websites that suck. Linking to crappy websites is a great way to send a clear signal to a search engine, "Hey! I link to crappy sites. So my site is probably crappy too."

If you can't figure out which websites suck or not, then yeah, reciprocal linking won't work for you. Here's a hint though. If you don't see anything useful or original on a site, then it sucks.

On-topic, high quality link exchanges have a place in any link builder's bag of tricks. And while I don't think for a minute that link exchanges should be the only tool in your toolbox, it's certainly a silly one to leave out just because people go around parroting to each other that link exchanging is dead.