“If you link to me, I’ll link to you.” Does it work?
According to Ahrefs 43.7% of the 112,440 top-ranking pages have reciprocal links and most SEO marketers used to swear by link exchange but Google says otherwise.
Source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/reciprocal-links/ 
Good or Bad for SEO?
Both depend on the circumstance of consideration.
These links can be beneficial when relevant to the content. If you’ve to think hard about where you fit a certain backlink in content- it doesn’t belong. If a blog is detailing different types of diets mentioning the ‘vegetarian’ diet and it links back to another blog about ‘protein dense vegetarian sources’, ‘sources of B12 in a vegetarian diet’ etc it’s highly relevant. These blogs link back to the blogs about types of diet to allow their readers to explore more about the nuances of different diets.
Content shouldn’t be built around the sole purpose of backlinking. The principle is, ‘write good content and then add relevant backlinks.’
Reciprocal linking is done intentionally for the sake of acquiring more backlinks- both sites participate in ‘link exchanging’. However, such manipulative linking schemes violate Google’s spam policies and violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines inviting penalties.
So should you be exchanging links?
In moderation yes, following the right principles.
If some site known in your niche links back to you, you’ll end up on their audience’s radar. Getting more eyes on your content, and your brand is always a good thing and so is referencing some well-written informational content your readers can check out while going through your article. Content publishers frequently do it, readers are used to it.
Link exchange just needs to be done right
How do you reap the benefits of a successful link exchange without getting Google’s guard up. How do you execute a safe link exchange?
First, your three primary goals are
- Relevance
- Authority
- Traffic
Not all backlinks have the same value, a link exchange should ideally be favorable to both parties.
1. Authority of link partner and authenticity of link exchange
The metrics to go by are
- DR of 40 or more
- High-quality link profile with no spammy links
- Trust flow above 10
- Minimum 5000 monthly visitors
- The outbound link ratio should be less than 2
- Both websites shouldn’t have a lot of already overlapping links
Authentic and value-adding content is how Google bots rank your crawled website, the visitor should find the content educational.
Your link partner has to be in the same or a similar niche. If you’re a lipstick brand you can partner with websites related to makeup, grooming, and fashion but backlinking to a fitness website will not look as natural.
2. Link Placement
When you get a quality backlink relevant to your content, place it where it’ll be valuable information for the reader. The anchor text should sit right within the content of your page and be accompanied by proper rel tags. Broken backlinks don’t get you the link juice.
A webmaster’s cheat guide to safer link exchange
1. Spy on Your Competitors (But the Good Kind)
Your competitors may be your biggest allies (don’t worry, they won’t find out). Choose a competitor that’s doing well and measure their traffic on similar.web
Generating a competitor backlink report is easy with a backlink analysis tool and once you get it, pay attention to websites with high DA they’ve incoming links from.
We’re talking of link exchange so you can get the backlink report for the high DA website as well and if it mentions your competitor- we know there’s been a link exchange. If your competitor is still ranking well after these link exchanges you’ve struck a goldmine and you could reach out to the same websites.
2. Link-Building Communities
Imagine if you had a secure link-building community at your disposal where you could connect with thousands of active link builders with websites in a variety of niches (including yours). What makes this community secure is, that all link builder’s websites are manually checked before being let into the network.
You just need to filter sites with an inbuilt filter in a community app, find sites in your niche, and send a link exchange request to them. You can even be in a back-and-forth conversation with your link partner within the community. Sounds like your hard work got cut down to 0.1%? That’s right.
Linkly is this community, so join us!
Linkly, Backlink Monitor, IndexMySite, and SEOBox are our suite of tools for our network of 2400+ SEO marketers who’ve continued to get on us throughout the years. We’ve got an active Slack channel as well with link builders discussing link exchange opportunities, Search Engine Algorithm updates, and much more.
These communities exist on Facebook as well and the idea of Linkly was born off these Facebook groups. We adore them! But getting quality backlinks on there is a game of chance and still a lot of manual work (you can’t auto-filter sites in your niches or similar). Quality link building is what called for the creation of Linkly.
In conclusion…
Reciprocal links categorized as “good” or “bad” are influenced by how well they are executed.
If you disguise your paid link exchange as genuine incoming links with quality content, from similar niche websites and not having too many links on one website – Google will reward you for being an “authority figure” in your niche.