By Ivan Kelly
Build Traffic And Ranking With Reciprocal Linking
The aim of a reciprocal linking strategy is usually
twofold: First to attract visitors from the linking partner to your
own site and, secondly, to improve your page ranking with the search
engines. A higher page ranking, especially with Google, indicates
more relevance when inquiries are made on a given keyword. Relevance
encourages the search engines to send free, targeted traffic to
your website.
Important Considerations
1. Build online relationships. Exchanging links with other relevant
websites is a great way to start building partnerships with other
website owners and may open the door for future joint venture requests.
2. Build your link popularity. Most search engines view sites that
have many links to them as being important. So, the more sites that
link to your site, the higher your site might rank. But again, make
sure that all reciprocal links are relevant to your site or the
search engines will penalize you.
3. Avoid exchanging links with sites that have a huge link directory.
If your site is listed on page 43 in your category of another site's
link directory, few people will ever see your link. Although a link
will be generated to your site for the search engines, you will
not receive much traffic from the link exchange. Try to exchange
links with sites where your link will be displayed on the first,
or at the most, the second page of another site's link directory.
4. Don't exchange links with everybody that asks. What advantage
is there in exchanging links with a site that sells wedding favors
when your site is about dog training? Anyone that visits the wedding
favor site will be looking for information concerning weddings,
not dog training, and very few will click on your link regardless
of how high the page rank is for the wedding site. The key here
is to exchange links only with sites that are relevant to your site
or to your keywords.
5. The main goal of any linking strategy is to get more traffic
to a website. Reciprocal linking can work for or against you in
this matter depending on the site that you exchange links with.
If you exchange links with sites that receive a lot of traffic,
some of that traffic may be diverted to your site. On the other
hand, if you exchange links with a low traffic site, you may divert
some of your traffic to the other site without seeing a similar
return. The solution is to exchange reciprocal links with a site
with a page rank no lower than one level below yours and to try
to exchange links with many sites with a higher page rank. Ideally,
you would seek to exchange links with sites that have at least a
PR 4.
How To Set Up A Link Page
The optimum way to set up a link page is to enter all links manually.
Yes, it is time consuming but when you are starting out, this is
the best way to do it.
You would first need to set up a page on your website just for
your link categories. You can call this page anything you like such
as Links, My Partners, Link Partners, My Link Partners, etc. Set
up this page with the major categories and subcategories that are
relevant to your site. Then, set up a page for each subcategory
that will contain the actual links. Test to be sure that whenever
anyone clicks on a subcategory that they are taken to the appropriate
link page.
Prepare a short 3 - 5 line ad about your website or your product
and include the URL to your website. This should be in HTML code
for easy uploading. Each linking company has their own procedure,
but generally, each time you ask to exchange links, you'll need
to copy and paste the other website's HTML code onto your link page
under the correct category and subcategory. You will then need to
upload the updated page to your website.
Once this is done, let the other website know on which of your
pages they can find their link. If the other website owner approves
the link exchange, they should add your link to their link page
and inform you on exactly what page you can find it.
Check to make sure that your link has been added to their site.
If they have not added your link, you have the option of contacting
the website owner as to why or of removing their link from your
site.
Mention reciprocal linking on any internet marketing forum and
you will be sure to get a barrage of heated replies. There is a
continual debate about the advantages and disadvantages involved
in reciprocal linking and both sides make convincing statements.
If you do decide to get involved in reciprocal linking, join only
well established link exchanges that allow you to approve or disapprove
the link. Avoid link farms or link exchanges that will automatically
exchange your link with their entire database regardless of the
relevancy to your website.
Ivan Kelly managed a Direct Mail business with extensive mailing
lists for ten years and has designed and promoted many websites.
He also provides quality f'ree courses on key internet marketing
subjects. A list of these free courses is available at: http://www.WebStartAdvisor.com/info.html
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ivan_Kelly
Reciprocal linking articles
Tools:
Are
your site ready for traffic?
Traffic building web sites at Surfwebtips web directory
Back to Webmaster
Resource Center
|
