Recently in several SEO forums I noticed a number of threads discussing ways to find and build “economical” links. The forum participants wanted to know how they could initiate “safe” reciprocal linking as well as “fast” submissions to free article directories. They reasoned these tactics were worth doing because both linking methods were “economical” and “easy” to use.
I understand some linking techniques can be expensive, tedious to implement and extremely time consuming, but tying your online business success to linking tactics deemed “easy”, “fast” and “cheap” seems counter-productive. If you limit your linking to low-cost tactics or look at the practice as “link building” instead of “marketing for links” you’re almost guaranteed to fail.
Diane, I think it’s fine to swap links with sites topically or geographically relevant to yours. Part of the “power” behind recips is the control you have over where they are placed, what they say and where they point. I wouldn’t make it the only tatic I use nor would I do more than the 8-10 you’re suggesting but if the partner sites were good ones (were indexed, used same/similar keywords, had similar/same readership) then yes, I would swap.