This post is great. Although I still search for recips – I often wonder if Im living in the past with this method. My sites still rank, but maybe because of the other SEO elements I use. So hard to tell with the Google shifts…

Comment #25: It’s true that links are now ultra dominant. If something changes, a lot of sites will be in trouble. For the time being though, SERPS do not seem to value content as much as everyone thought they would after the Google changes last year and their so called semantic updates.

Although reciprocal linking is said to be irrelevant by most up to date SEO’s, it’s odd how some can have such an effect. Last month I tested 2 PR6 recips on one of my test pages. It helped me rank up approx 10 spots to #11 in google for a search term w/ approx 200 searches per day. This has not always worked on test sites but it seems there are still a few cases where it helps. I’d say, if you know of 10-20 of these sites, it never hurts to recip from a decent link/resource page.

Just my 2 cents!

I agree with most of the comments with maybe the exception of building reciprocal links and deleting the links page!!!!

In any event, my experience shows that there is more to link value than meets the eye. When reciprocal linking took a hit, about 20 of my sites were visibly affected – while another 30 or so were not. This was the same for the paid directory PR crash. Many sites stayed the same.

Suffice to say I still believe the best way to achieve rankings for your site (or your client) is to dig around for mid PR links (free), make honest valuable comments on high PR blogs and then supplement this with one or two high ranking authority directories.

Seems to work for me – for how long, one never knows.

“If your not listed on Google you don’t relay exist.”

I thought that was a bit unfair who wants to be told what they can and cant do. At the end of the day though the fact is 95% of us do, so a big thumbs up for pointing out all the aspects from your research much appreciated.