To run a good reciprocal links directory on your website, it takes some effort. Link building does not happen over night. However, it can drive you steadily increasing website traffic. They are free and you don't need to pay for every click. So, you can regard it as a low cost traffic generation system that drive visitors to your site.

If 100 reciprocal links can drive you 10 unique visitors per day, 500 reciprocal links can drive you 50 unique visitors daily. It converts to 1,500 unique visitors monthly or 18,000 extra unique visitors every year should you implement reciprocal link building.

To you, it means thousands dollars. If you purchase these traffic from pay per click search engines e.g. Overture.com, you may pay, US$18,000 per year for 18,000 clicks. It is not uncommon that each click is US$1. In some competitive industry, each click in Overture.com means US$4.5 or above.

Not to mention you can convert a certain percentage of 18,000 visitors you drive from reciprocal links to your customers. So, it can mean you gain another thousand dollars through building your reciprocal link directory.

As a by-products, your website's link popularity is increasing because number of incoming links to your site is increasing. It eventually increases your search engine ranking across major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Altavista, etc. As a result, you can another thousand dollars from this benefits.

Conclusion: Building reciprocal link directory is worthwhile!

To be successful, you should remember of the following:

Decide which websites to exchange links with

If your site is targeting for some specific niche, nNot every website out there that does link exchanges is right for you. You want to exchange links with a website that will bring targeted traffic (visitors/customers that are interested in what you have to offer).

Exchanging links with websites that have similar or complimentary themes or topics, should produce the best targeted traffic.

Politely ask for link exchange can do you good

Once you find a website to exchange links, how do you ask for a reciprocal link?
Send the webmaster a personal email and the best is don't let them feel that you are sending bulk emails and the webmaster is a member of your email list.

In the email, state your:

name,
your URL
where their link is located on your website
what you like about their site and
why it would be mutually beneficial to exchange links
Try not to use "pre-made emails". Show the webmaster that you actually visited their website and you know what you are talking about. Sending blind, bulk emails out is not a good idea.

Someone who has actually looked over our website before emailing us is more likely to get a link since they have taken the time to review our website and rules.

Manage link exchange in timely fashion

If you request a link exchange with other webmasters, you should firstly link their sites first. On the other hand, if you accept a link exchange request, promptly put their links on your sites. Otherwise, you may just regarded as a link cheater, or not respect your link partners.

After you make the reciprocal link, email your link partners it is done and point them to the respective URL.

In case you reject a link exchange request, you may send a courtesy email to explain the reason.

Granted, it is time consuming but respecting every link partner is worthwhile. Software like Automate Link Exchange ™ can help to automate these kind of email communication in a timely fashion, however.

Periodically check if your link partners are still linking to you

Granted, most of the link partners are honest guys but NOT all. So, you'd better check it. Sometimes, people may just mistakenly remove your links. Hence, if you find your link partners took off your site, send them a courtesy email and request them to re-link to your site.

Again, it is time consuming but worthwhile! You may consider using link exchange software like Automate Link Exchange. It works in server side and can help you check all link partners in a pre-determined schedule.

Suggest the text for linking to you carefully

If someone is willing to link to you but use some inappropriate text to describe your site, it may do you more harm! It affects whether a visitor will click the link and go to your site, affects your branding, affects how reader perceive your site!!

So, you may suggest the text to your link partners.

Automate Link Exchange is a lovely software that can help you to exert control of how people should link to you. If they use the wrong text, the software rejects their submission immediately. It saves you lots of time in managing the checking!