A proven current strategy is to be involved in is a 3 way link program, thus avoiding reciprocal links. With a 3-way link all 3 sites get what Google sees as a one-way link to their web site. In the old reciprocal link method, site A linked to site B and site B linked back to site A. Google does not value that kind of link very much at all anymore. Google wants to see one-way links (or at least what it believes are one-way links)

Read more about this strategy here. The beauty is that you set it up and forget it.. the program does the work for you.

Here's some helper notes for getting the service working quickly with a Joomla! site.

• Go and check out this service.  You will note that you get 50 sites you can include in their 3Way links program, and that if any of your sites are PR (Google Page Rank) 4 or higher, they will not count against the total.
• The service essentially lets you pick a site subject category and three separate keywords which determine linking (each have different proportion weightings)
• Everything is fairly straightforward except perhaps the need to ensure the ensuing links pages are wrapped into your site design.  The program requires you to enter header and footer html to achieve this, and being static, it's not a great idea for a Joomla! user.  And of course, being in a php environment, you do not have to.
• In their required header field, just enter  <div>  and in the footer field enter   </div>    This overcomes the fact that you cannot proceed unless something is defined here.
• If using Joomla! version series 1.0.xx, create a static page (If using 1.5 series, create a normal page - uncategorized) and call it the same file name that you entered in 3WayLinks.com's file name box.
• You must have a SEF program working on your site that will produce the required file name, example : if you entered "other-resources.html" in 3WayLinks.com, they must be able to find that page when their program "checks" on your site setup.  You can achieve this by a number of ways, but the recommended way is to use extension sh404SEF and it will produce a SEF url matching your page title or alias, depending on your sh404SEF setup.
• Go to the php code page, but do not download the file, just copy the php code from the box.
• Enter the copied php code in your new page on your Joomla! site and save it.
• If everything is done right, you should be able to complete the 3WayLinks.com instructions ready for them to approve it.

SEF = search engine friendly, SEO = search engine optimization, Joomla! SEO