Originally Posted by HHI Golf Guy

No, that's about it. I also formed my opinion in conjunction with Matt's comments/demonstration at SES where he showed how easy it was for Google to identify links pages, reciprocal links, three-way links, and paid links.

FWIW, I believe that reciprocal links will always be valuable - if they are done "correctly". What do I mean by that? In the past Google has made statements about link schemes and links to artificially increase PR, etc.

Combining all of this I believe that the content driven links / mini article approach is the way to go. HOWEVER, I would caution everyone not to go overboard with hundreds and hundreds of these types of links. First, you dilute the theme of your own site. Second, having too many of these would not seem "natural".

My plan is to have 3-4 of these for each state, then maybe 15-20 normal link exchanges following the combined articles (as well a link or two to specific state authority sites).

I would bet that this would be more than enough to move up in the rankings in most (but not all) markets. As I receive more requests for mini article exchanges I will re-evaluate my current exchanges and drop the weaker sites. I also may use a combination of root domain and sub domain links for mini articles and regular links.