Reciprocal Link Dangers?

[DownPour]

I know that there are issues with reciprocal linking, and I'd choose to avoid it if I could, but the circumstance I have been put into may require me to do so.

Say we do it in the worst possible way. What is the worst case scenario here?

Is it possible to be hit with a site-wide penalty?

Is there a range of penalties? or you just get dinged or not?

Will the links themselves simply be devalued? and by how much? they loose half their juice? All of it?

And if you are penalized, how difficult would it be to recover?

Can you just ditch the recips? or is it a lot more difficult than that?

Obviously it has to do more with how you do it and what your site and the other site are like content-wise, but I just wanted to know what you think about the actual possible penalties and recovery.

TIA for any answers.

[TakeshiYoung]

Like you said, how you do it has the most impact for how reciprocal links are treated.

As far as penalties are concerned, if you're going for sitewide blogroll type links, if you use exact match anchor text, you could be slapped with Penguin. Best to stick to your brand name for links like that.

If Google feels like the links are there just to manipulate search rankings, then those links will stop passing value, as in zero link juice.

But again, it's all in how you do it. It's completely natural for sites in the same niche to link to each other. As long as it doesn't look spammy or like you're linking to each other just for the sake of search engines, you should be fine.