A situation where two sites link to and from each other, though not necessarily to the pages that contain these links, usually the result of an agreement between the sites.
Reciprocal Link –From Wikipedia
Reciprocal link– A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. For example, Alice and Bob have websites. If Bob’s website links to Alice’s website, and Alice’s website links to Bob’s website, the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is no longer an important part of the search engine optimization process.Google and other search engines now do not give credit to reciprocal linking as it does not indicate genuine link popularity
SEO By the Sea has a great article explaining everything you would ever want to know about reciprocal links including:
- Search Engine Warnings on Links Between Pages
- Classifications for Search Ranking Signals
- Content Based, Link Based, and User Behavior Based Ranking Signals
- Query Dependant and Query Independant Ranking Signals
- Mixing Signals and Reordering Page Rankings
- Links Between Pages as a Ranking Signal
- Yahoo’s Patent Application on Excessive Reciprocal Links
- Related Yahoo Patent Filings Involving Linking
- Reciprocal Links and “Suspicious Entities”
There are ways to build reciprocal links and methods you should stay away from. Of course all of the SEO services provided by XTELWEB only follow the “white hat” methods for building and maintaining links, backlinks and everything else we do.