Reciprocal linking is a good way to get links on your website. Search engines use the number of links from external sources to judge what your place should be on search engines. With increase in the number of external links on your site, the site will have better chances of making it to the top on search engines.
But you need to understand that it is not just about the link. Rather, it is about the quality of the link. The link you are getting from external sources should be of good quality if it is to positively affect your rating on search engines.
What constitutes quality reciprocal linking?
For an external link to be of good quality, it should come from a reputable site. The site providing the link should already have very high rating on search engine itself. Links from small time and new online business may therefore not have much effect on your search engine rankings.
How do you determine how qualitative the links are?
After you must have acquired some external links on your website, you can judge by yourself how well you will do on search engines even before you are ranked there. You can use the Google toolbar to judge how your site will fair. These tool ranks sites between 0 and 10. If your site is able to rank from 6 to 10 then you stand a good chance of rising up the SEO ladder. But a rank rating from 5 to 0 is not good at all. This gives a great insight into the quality of the reciprocal linking you have done on the site.
As it had been hinted above, it will be better to research the link popularity on the site from where you are getting your external links. If the links are not qualitative, it will have its own negative effect on your site. If your site has all the right kind of content and the right kind of setting for top position on search engines, a low quality external link can rob your site of top position on search engines.
Importance of quality external links
Before you add any external link from any website, make sure the content on that other website is of high quality. It does not sound like a good idea to send your visitors to a site with low quality content. This will tell on the credibility of your site and whatever you have to offer there.
If you do not know how to build backlinks yourself, it is suggested that you hire a SEO Company and let them build high quality backlinks for your website and let it rank higher on search engines result pages.