Hoople - 2:54 pm on Aug 23, 2011 (gmt 0)

I always read that reciprocal linking is not good.

Reciprocal Linking is getting a lot of bad press as of late. Excessive reciprocal linking to unreleated sites some have seen having low value. Reciprocal linking inside your niche is fine. Google likes these 'natural' link as they are what humans would do. Links done for Google's sake can be detected and the percieved potential value derived from them discarded.

There is a YouTube video by Matt Cutts (Google WebSpam team) where he mentions aspects of reciprocal linking.