By Tammy Ames
Link Exchange Program: Get Started Building Your
Link Popularity!
Every website needs a link exchange program. Every
week, set aside time to work on your link exchange program to build
up the quality and number of your text links out on other websites
within your niche market.
Why not exchange banners? Search engines are fueled by text. Key
words and links are what you are creating out on other websites.
Website visitors do indeed check link pages and your text link on
quality sites will generate some degree of traffic for you. You
may like the look of your banner but when it comes to creating a
strong link exchange program - build your website description with
good key words and strong title with your URL.
What should your link exchange information look like?
A link exchange program starts with your own unique text ad under
200 characters full of your key words, don't need sentences, put
most important key words early in the text ad, check spelling, no
"ALL CAPS" set up in this order:
Title
Description
URL
Your title - A descriptive title for your website, not necessarily
your domain name but the name you are branding your site with. There
are very strong websites that use a title that describes the site
rather than the domain name, again, using strong key words. Others
have opted to use a title that starts with a number or letter "A"
so that on another website - their text link will appear early in
the page.
Website Description - Use Overture's Keyword Selector Tool to refine
your text for your website description. The more thought and planning
you put into your title and description, the more powerful your
link exchange will have on search engines.
Categorizing your own text link - To save time and energy, think
about what categories your text link would work on (i.e. work at
home recourses, parenting, home decor, time management - the theme
of your website) because some sites will want you choose the category
that your website will fit in!
Once you have designed your own link description, you are ready
to set up your own link exchange program for your website. As you
will be asking other website owners to put your link information
on their "links" or "resource" page, you need
to set up your own page for you to place their link exchange information.
This is called reciprocal link exchange.
Reciprocal Link Exchange - In essence, you are "swapping links".
It is an even trade. Your text link on one of their links pages
with your URL pointing to your homepage and you place their text
link information on your links page while setting up their link
to connect with their homepage (index page).
Before you can offer a reciprocal link exchange with another webmaster,
you will often need to show them you have already put their link
information on your website.
Designate at least one page for your link exchange program. As
your link exchanges grow, you will expand your pages into different
categories. Make sure your link exchange program is linked to your
main page and every page of your website. Alphabetize and categorize
your listing of reciprocal links.
Just starting your link exchange program?
Have your page all set up for links from other websites plus have
the information others need to exchange links with you.
Once you have designed your own link information and a resource
page to put up the links information from your link partners, it
is time to start asking other website owners to put Your Link Information
on their own links page.
Choosing your link partners for reciprocal link exchange
Think niche. Your website has a theme, a specialty- a marketing
niche. Choose link exchanges with websites that have similar themes.
If your website is about handmade candles then focus on websites
that offer handmade, handcrafted products. Explore websites with
candle accessories, home decor, gifts and aromatherapy.
Websites that offer what you believe your visitors would enjoy
are where you focus your link exchanges. Choose sites that are complementary
to your own, not competitive. The more closely related the subject
of your link partner's site, the more relevant your own link description
will be to their visitors and to search engines.
Page Rank - the higher the page rank of the site that you exchange
links with, the more impact on search engines. That does not mean
that you should not exchange links with websites that only have
a page rank of 3 or higher but the majority of your link exchanges
should be with websites ranking well with top search engines.
Test your own link popularity - you have already exchanged links
with some websites and now you want to know if it's helping you
with search engines. I found UpTimeBot usefully for getting a handle
on what's happening with your link exchange program.
Its disheartening that Google is slow to catch up with your link
exchanges but be persistent in your weekly time to set up quality
reciprocal link exchanges.
The other major search engines will help you with traffic and link
popularity until Google does it's own bit. Persistence with your
link exchange program does pay off!
In the end, Google DOES catch all the hard work and you will start
getting the traffic and page rank your website deserves!
Tammy Ames - WAHM
Connections owner and publisher of WAHM
Connections Ezine - helping work at home business owners succeed
online.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tammy_Ames
You can easily start your link exchange program, finding
your link partners at Surfwebtips. • Create
your Link Exchange Account
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