How to request riciprocal links to your site

Do's

• Concentrate your efforts on getting relevant high quality links.
• People are more likely to link with you if you already have a link to them. If you going to ask for a reciprocal link, first create your links before you send out any of your link request emails.
• Keep the links focused to your topic, or to items your visitors will be interested in. Don't just randomly link to other websites.
• When you request a link be personable, be specific about what attracted you to that site and explain why you'd be a good linking partner.
• If possible comment on a particular text from another website that got your attention and relate it to something on my website. It's very effective, people like when you notice them, and you're genuine.
• Keep your link requests brief. People are busy and don't want to read long emails.
• Pique the person’s interest by making the subject of your email interesting - so that the recipient will be more likely to open your email with your link request.
• Don't be shy about putting links to other sites in your articles. I know I regularly look through my web logs to see where the traffic is coming from. Who knows who might find you? I can tell you from experience it's worked for me.

Don'ts

• Don't participate in link farms and exchange programs.
• Don't make your link pages look like just a large lists of web pages. No one values these links. They generate no traffic or PR for the websites listed.
• Very important, don't send duplicate link request emails don't automate your requests.
• Don't CC lots of people in your link request emails.
• Don't expect links from larger sites to happen right away. Give yourself some time to build your reputation up, and then ask for higher quality links. Like I mentioned before, start smaller and build up.
• Don't capitalize your link title and/or description. The harder you make it for someone to incorporate your links, the less likely they're going to link to you.
• Don't try to ask for reciprocal links by falsely saying how much traffic your site gets. It's usually pretty obvious, and if not it will be obvious within no time at all. No one likes to link to dishonest people.

Based on an original article by Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK - Snagging Inbound Links