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I often get asked this question.  It’s one which confounds many people.

We hear about how important it is to have as many quality inbound links as you can, however once you start gathering these links you find that many webmasters prefer or insist on reciprocal links.  So, the question then becomes should I do this?

In this article, I explore this issue and provide my recommendations.

First, let me start by explaining what the difference is between these types of links.

One way links are those where you point to a site, or a site points to you without a link being returned.

Reciprocal links are when you point a link to a site and in exchange they point a link back at you.  This is also known as a link exchange.

Many times, especially when you start requesting links from highly popular sites, the sites you want the link from requests or requires a link back to them.  When this happens we often get asked if reciprocal linking is OK.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it is OK.  In fact, a certain amount of reciprocal linking is required in order to make your link building efforts appear natural to the search engines.

This is because search engines are getting more adept at spotting unnatural link building.  Such things as all one way links or only having links from high PageRank sites are dead giveaways that you are partaking in unnatural link building.

Unnatural link building is akin to purchasing links online.  While search engines frown upon it, there’s little they can do to stop it or even spot it unless it is excessive.

Let’s take a look at an example:

You have a brand new site that you’ve just launched.  The domain registration is less than 6 months old.  You do have adequate content on your site however, so you begin link building.

If, all of a sudden, you managed to get several one way PR5, 6 or 7 links in a short time, there’s a good chance you’d tip off the spam police.

This is because once you start building links from sites like this, engines like Google know there are certain characteristics that such sites have.

For one thing, a site like this wouldn’t likely give away a quality link without something in exchange.  Therefore, if you are not reciprocating there’s a good chance you paid for these links.

Not only that, but all the links are from high PR sites and this too is something Google looks for.

You see, such link building just isn’t what one would consider natural for a new site.

Generally, a new site would most likely get links from the ODP and Yahoo!, then start searching out other related directories and then request links from there.  There’s also a pretty good chance that, because it’s a new site, most of the links it would get are from similar sites – that is, sites that are also relatively new or have a lower PageRank.

Of course, that’s not to say that you won’t luck out and get a few links from high PageRank sites, but on the whole it wouldn’t be natural to only get high PageRank links.

I should mention here that while I refer to PageRank, I’m using that as a catch-all phrase for link popularity.  While the other engines don’t use PageRank, they do have their own form of link popularity algorithms. For the purposes of this article though, it’s easier for me to just bunch them together under the “PageRank” banner. 

So, what engines like Google look for (and actually suggest in their webmaster guidelines) are links from the Open Directory as well as Yahoo!

As you’d expect, they suggest building links from other relevant and related sites.  But, as I suggested above, what tips them off is when you all of a sudden amass a large amount of links in a short time, or worse, several high PageRank links in a short time.

So, what you want to do is make it look natural.  That means it’s OK to buy links, just make sure you don’t buy too many at once.  Or, if you do buy links, try and buy a variety of more popular and less popular links.

Also, don’t be afraid of link exchanges.  Again, too many inbound links without sufficient outbound links is again a red flag.  Therefore, reciprocal linking is also recommended in moderation.

Keep in mind that when doing link exchanges, link popularity not only flows into your site from your inbound links but also flows out through your outbound links.  Therefore, it is best not to have too many outbound links.

What you really want is a mix of reciprocal and one way links.  It also doesn’t hurt to have a few one way outbound links as well.

For example, you will often see links out to other blogs or news sites from my articles.  This is common of the web.  The search engines expect you to link out to pages which are relevant to you.  That is why I do link out to other sites like Search Engine Watch, and why other sites link here.  Sites like WebProNews and SearchBrains, for example.

So, to answer the question which is better?  The answer is neither.  You need a blended approach to link building – they can’t all be one way inbound links nor is it in your best interest to do all reciprocal links.  You need to do a little of both.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through safe and effective link building. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.