There are many benefits of reciprocal linking, however the two most prominent to the are: increased, targeted traffic to your website, and a higher ranking in the search engine results. Both of these are integral aspects of search engine optimization (SEO).

A reciprocal link is, essentially, a link exchange in which two parties agree to swap links for mutual benefit. You find a website that shares similar content to yours (a quality link) and then email the webmaster of this website, offering to post a link to his or her site and asking that they reciprocate with a link back to your site.

Reciprocal linking is an important strategy in the generation of traffic and in optimization of your search engine ranking. Link exchanges should be sought as early in the developmental and implementation stages of your site as possible so that, when your site is submitted to the search engines for indexing, the links back to your site will be taken into consideration in the initial page ranking algorithms.

Relevant quality links should continually be sought out, despite claims to the contrary that a website can have too many relevant and quality link backs. Search engine algorithms are not static, changing seemingly daily, and keeping your website optimized is a perpetual task.

Relevant and quality links means websites that have similar content (essential and qualitative) and are is relevant to what you provide on your site in terms of the content, products, and/or services you provide. Multitudinous and random links from just any, contextually irrelevant site will not benefit your site ranking nor will it provide for targeted traffic. In fact, it can accomplish just the opposite—lowering your search engine ranking and thus decreasing the flow of targeted traffic to your site.

Also, when your site is first launched, it is important to obtain links from, not only relevant and quality sites, but as well from sites that have a PR4+ ranking. ‘PR’ stands for page rank and is the result of a complex equation for determining a website’s overall importance within Goolge’s ranking system. The higher the ranking, the greater the importance of the site (in the eyes of the search engines at least). The computational algorithm for figuring a site’s PR depends to a great extent on the number of “votes,” i.e., the number of relevant quality links a site has generated from other websites.

Of course some highly ranked sites will refuse to link to your site (especially if your site is new) and so will some of the lesser ranked sites. In any case, there are some things that you can do to increase your odds of obtaining relevant and quality links - even from the more established and higher ranked sites.

Before contacting a webmaster requesting a link exchange, post a link to his or her website on your site first. In your initial contact, tell the webmaster that you enjoyed a particular aspect of his or her content and thought that your customers would as well (compliments never hurt do they?). If you don’t hear back immediately don’t fret it. Send a follow-up email. If you still don’t hear back…move right along to the next link exchange candidate. Be sure to keep an organized list of the webmasters contacted so as to avoid contacting in duplicate.

As well, you should “sell” your website to the other webmaster. Inform him or her just what benefit your website would be to his or her own customers. Webmasters are always looking for things to benefit existing customers and to attract new customers as well.

There are other ways to obtain links as well. For example, you may choose to write a handful of articles on subjects related to the content of your website and submit them to the numerous online article directories. The directories allow, typically in the author bio, space to provide links to the author’s websites. Articles are an excellent source of obtaining links, though a slightly different strategy than presented above. Related to the above strategy however, you could suggest to webmasters the possibility of an article exchange. On this scenario, you post an article of related content on your website penned by the webmaster in question, providing a link back to his or her site, and they in turn do the same for you. This often works when certain webmasters won’t link to you directly.

You can also participate in link exchange programs where the idea is to easily exchange links with other site owners. There are a ton of other ways to build links: you can participate in forums and have links in your sig, leave comments on blogs, buy them from willing sites, send out a press release and so on. Just don’t go out and start getting links on FFA (free for all) sites; they won’t do anything but hurt your ranking.

All in all, reciprocal links are key to search engine optimization and traffic generation. Obtain as many relevant and quality links back to your site as you possibly can, and you will soon see the results — measured in sales.

Justin Michie is an Internet Marketing specialist, small business consultant and author of the best selling Internet Marketing Book, Street Smart Internet Marketing . If you’re interested in learning more about marketing on the internet and/or making money online, you can pick up a copy of his new book from www.InternetMarketingBook.com.