Reciprocal link
A reciprocal link occurs when two websites establish an agreement to place an outbound link from site A to site B and, simultaneously or otherwise, a link going from B to A.
This practice was very common in the early stages of SEO, as it was believed to increase the authority and ranking of both sites in search engines. However, as search engine algorithms evolved, the effectiveness of reciprocal links decreased, and Google, in particular, began to penalize sites that abuse this practice, considering it an attempt to manipulate search results.
Therefore, although the presence of an occasional, relevant reciprocal link is “harmless” and may even be useful (if the link offers real added value to users, for example), with a view to building a natural backlink profile it would be important to avoid excessive link exchange, which could appear as a manipulation strategy to search engines.
