Once upon a time a website owner looked for and secured links from other sites simply to get traffic from that site and send some traffic back for the privilege.

There was no Google, Yahoo, or MSN setting rules about reciprocal links which have now somehow become "the law."

Links were for traffic...targeted traffic.

Since, to this day, nothing does your site more good than a good, visible, relevant link from a site which caters to your perfect market base, I propose a test you can run in your marketing for a couple of months.

Get links from sites based upon factors that matter most:

1. Good content
2. Strong reader base
3. Willingness to link from a prominent place

Let the engines worry about their silly algorithms for a couple months. Pretend they are not there. I think you will be surprised when you come back and see that they actually like you more than before!

Google "banned" reciprocal linking because it was being abused and they set about to detect the abuse and rectify their rankings by giving you no love (PR) for the links you got (if you used automation and got a lot of senseless links).

The solution for you? Don't go grabbing links from link directories and non relevant sites, no matter how high their rankings or PR.

The rule is: less links, higher value, less time spent getting them.

Choosing the right sites...

Good Content

A site that does a great job on real content (not just sales material and pitches) is a great link partner.

People flock to content and appreciate it. Get your links in front of people who appreciate the content they are reading. They will be in a good mood when they hit your link.

Strong Reader Base

Does the site have an obvious following? If it's a blog, are there a lot of comments and conversations going on? Are they from today or last year?

Willingness to Link from an Obvious Place

Links need to come from pages on other sites that actually see human visitors in as high number as possible. And the owner must be willing. It shouldn't be hard to convince someone or you should move on.

Easy Ways to Get Links (Reciprocal and Non Reciprocal)

*Be a part of something. If you are in a halfway decent niche, there is a wider discussion going on around you. Are you listening, commenting on blogs, doing trackbacks, and participating in forums?

*Do content exchange rather than link exchange. Write original content for someone in your niche and host their content on your site.

*Write exclusive content for another site in your niche just for the link. If someone wrote killer content for my blog that was perfect for my visitors I'd have a hard time turning it down!

There's no better place to be than in the posts of another popular blog!

Links make the web work. Now that there is a difference between good and bad links, just focus on what would be best for your site and your readers when acquiring links. That's all Google wants after all.