A reciprocal link happens when two websites link to each other to get traffic. For the online business owner, it is vital to try and make valuable reciprocal links by submitting the website to link exchange directories, and by making contact with related, relevant website businesses.
Once you’ve implemented the SEO strategy to make your website optimized and ready to go, your next step is to start networking online and integrate your website into as many niche markets as possible. Search engines like Google use things like link popularity (the number of links that go to a website and the anchor text of the link) to gauge a website business’ relevancy. From a search engine marketing perspective, it’s a no brainer—reciprocal linking is another part of the winning the online popularity contest for your Internet business.
Resource linking is when you link to websites (without expectations of reciprocity) that have valuable web content that your target audience would find interesting or useful. In terms of the search engine spiders, your website Internet ranking points for having quality links that also pertain to your website business product or service. If you make contact with your resource links they may become reciprocal, but you should closely examine whether this would help your online business website in the long run, or if the resource link is just better off as a hyperlink.
With either form of linking, it is not worth your time to “spam” hundreds of websites in the hopes of gaining links, because if they aren’t relevant to your online business you will be flagged as a spambot and lose the website performance game.