Reciprocal links have gotten a bad reputation because most webmasters have not stuck to the general guidelines of linking only to sites with relevant content. Then there are link farms, and other varies linking scams that are designed to drastically up the number of incoming links a site may have. The search engines are getting better at distinguishing between links that are just there as an attempt to gain Page Rank and actual legitimate links that would be of interest to the users of a particular web site.

Reciprocal links still have some benefits in terms of PR (as long as they are relevent and it would be best if the reciprocal link was on some form of content page and not within a links page). Following are a few benefits of reciprocal linking:

• Helps build PR – although reciprocal links do not have a drastic effect on PR, they still can help build PR if done correctly.
• Helps build relevancy to a keyword phrase.  This is one of the better reasons for reciprocal linking because you can have many variations of keyword phrases leading back to your site.
• Traffic – Many webmasters forget that each link on the web has a potential of sending traffic to your site.
• Helps build a unique user experience. Building truly useful external links that your visitors would be interested in will gain creditability and your site will be viewed as a valuable resource. 
• Helps builds deep links to content pages.

Traditional reciprocal linking is an exchange of links to home pages between two websites.  This form of linking has been around since the advent of the web. Unfortunately, this is the type of links that have come under attack because of linking programs where everyone links to each others main domain or home page. This would be an un-natural way of linking and could actually be damaging to your sites PR.

Let examine a few points that will make your Traditional Reciprocal links more effective as a means of gaining PR.

• Reciprocate with “industry-specific” directories or niche directories. These are directories that only accept links under a certain category.  For example Extensive SEO directory only accepts SEO related links.
• Only reciprocate with other relevant sites or sites that would be of interest to the users of your site. For example: Let just assume that Extensive SEO comes across a site that deals with promoting your site threw offline resources even though Extensive SEO deals with Search Engine Optimization this site would be of interest to the users of our site. So therefore it would be an acceptable reciprocal link.

Content Relative Reciprocal Links – This form of linking would detail reciprocating with other content pages that share a common viewpoint on a given subject.
Some of the benefits of Content Relative Reciprocal Links include:

• Enables a website to acquire Deep links. Deep links are defined as links to content pages. This would be some page other then the home page. 
• Two articles that link to each other in a supporting way would be a prime example of a “Natural-Link” This would be like an author referencing someone else’s writing to support his own viewpoints. 
• Content Relative Reciprocal Links are also placed right on a content page not buried in a list of hundreds of external links on some kind of a “Link Page” So there would be more exposure to actual people thus turning the link into more traffic for your site.

Reciprocal links are not a dead method of Search Engine Optimization, in fact they are very much alive and an effective method of optimization. However, a webmaster must be very careful and selective to the types of sites or content there is link to.