While it is known that one-way links are better then reciprocal linking, link exchange is still an important seo strategy.

As a review, incoming links or backlinks are prioritized by Google. Google PageRank (PR) is determined basically by the incoming links to your site. The more backlinks you have, the greater traffic you will have and the higher the PR, the higher you are ranked on a specific keyword you are targeting.

Reciprocal Linking is a good alternative to build more backlinks in case you will have no more one way links to build. Same with One-Way Links, it is best advised that you link your site on a relevant backlink. Links from banned sites to your site doesn't ban you because you have no control over it, but if you link to banned sites, you are risking your site to be banned as well. So we better be careful in doing link exchange.

Here are some tips to optimize you link exchange campaign:
1. Be sure you yourself have a PR before starting the campaign. Some webmasters will not exchange with sites lower than their PR. So it is best to link exchange with a site that have the same PR as yours. Be sure to start with one-way linking before starting the reciprocal linking campaign.

2. You site must have good content and does not violate the Duplicate Content rule. Check the reciprocal site as well to avoid linking with that site. Their contents must also be relevant to your site.

3. Do not link with sites that does not link your site directly. Some sites provide link exchange but links your site like this, theirsite.com/go.php?yoursite.com. Others also add a rel="nofollow" in their links.

4. The page where your site will be listed should have less than 100 links. Search Engines see pages that have more than 100 links as link farms and will ban that site. You may also need to create a directory to make things easier.

5. Never subscribe with a link farm. Although link farms can be very tempting as they provide effortless link building in no time, you are greatly risking your site to being banned in no time as well.

6. When you add your link to their site, pay attention to the title of the link pointing towards your site. So, if you are looking for top placement for specific keywords, then they should be used in the title of the link instead of your website name.

7. Regularily check your backlinks especially the sites you are reciprocating with. They might have accidentally removed your link or deliberately removed yours, affecting your backlinks and making their site getting one-way link.