At Google and other search engines Link Popularity is a factor in getting you better rankings. According to Google “In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.””
There are two kinds of links:
- Reciprocal – you link to a site and they link back to you
- Non-reciprocal – a site links to you but you don’t link back to it
While there are companies in the business of finding reciprocal links for you, the ones who do a good job are few and far between. Plus, you must maintain a ‘resources’ page containing your outgoing links somewhere at your site. Monitoring whether or not other sites are linking back to you is a hassle. Making sure the links on your resources page are not broken (dead) is something that must be done regularly.
Google and other search engines do not like reciprocal links. They long ago figured out that people were essentially gaming the system by using them. You can actually get banned when you do reciprocal linking.
Conclusion: Non-reciprocal links are MUCH better.
Beware
Should you decide to conduct a Link Popularity campaign, beware of Free-For-All Links Programs (also called link farms or FFA). They are likely to do more harm than good and may actually get you in trouble. In many cases FFAs exist to promote MLM schemes or Network Marketing programs and as such do not have credibility.