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Looking for Reciprocal Link Partners –
Link Popularity
Why you
should have Reciprocal Links
As you may have already read in your search engine
research, one of the criterions for search engines can be popularity.
One of the meanings of “popularity” is “links to your website. “
If you have links going from your website to other
websites, for example, when you have affiliates on your website that is
not as important as links going from other websites to your website.
The logic for popularity is simple.
If there are other websites linking to your website they must be
doing it for a reason, i.e., other websites have found your website to
be valuable, therefore there must be value for visitors looking for the
kind of information you have on your website.
And because of that value, your website can get a higher listing
over those sites that do not have that popularity factor. This is an
obvious benefit for your website.
Another benefit for your website of link exchanging
is that you can piggy back on sites that already have high ranking.
Many search engine robots when spidering a website will spider
the links on that site. If
one of the links on that site goes to your website, the robot will
spider your website, too. By
being linked to the high ranking site this helps your site improve its
ranking.
Research for
link exchanges
Before you research websites with which to do link
exchanges you must sit down and do brainstorming. Make a list of
businesses that would be complimentary to your business.
You do not want to link to competitors, that do exactly what you
do.
For instance, if you market flowers, you might want
to link to sites that market cards, gifts, personal items, flower vases,
candles, mementos, travel, etc. If
you market a particular kind of flowers, such as dried or pressed
flowers, then you might want to link to sites that market fresh cut
flowers or potted flowers.
Searching on
the Internet for Sites to Link to
To find link exchange partners go to the various
main search engines and look for complimentary sites.
It is very important you keep a list of the sites you want to
contact so you can track your marketing efforts.
You may want to keep track in your Business Journal, another
notebook or on 3x5 cards, a card for each website.
What to Look
For
Basically, you are looking for other websites worth
linking to, just as you are to build a website worth coming to.
Specifically,
1.
It looks good. It
looks clean (design-wise), professional, appealing, polished, it looks
like the owner of the website knows what s/he is doing.
2.
Check to see if the site is already doing link exchanges
with other sites. That maybe
a good sign for you.
3.
Find a contact email address you can email.
It is a
Numbers Game
Finding sites to do link exchanges with is like any
other kind of marketing, it is a numbers game.
In most cases the more websites you contact the more sites with
which you will do link exchanges. It
is that simple. And
sometimes you get lucky, like Las Vegas.
One client contacted 10 other sites and got five positive emails
back. You may find you have
to contact many more. How
many is enough? That is up
to you. Six link exchanges
would be good and a dozen even better.
Do you need 50 links? Why
not.
Dealing with
Responses, Non-Responses and Rude Responses
It sounds silly to say, but from experience, we
know some people need to hear it. You
may have to develop a bit of a thick skin when doing link exchange
invitations. Why?
Because not everyone is as interested in your business’s
success are you are.
You may send out a batch of link exchange
invitations and not hear back from anyone.
You may get a few replies written by some rather ignorant people.
So what! Don’t let
that stop you, keep sending them out.
Those that don’t respond you may want to follow up, again, in a
few days or a week. If you
still get nothing back, check their site a month later and see if the
site still ranks well. If it
does, send them another invitation.
There is something to say about persistence.
Here is an example of a Link Exchange Invitation
you can use or alter as you please.
Link Exchanges Email – Sample
Subject: Let's
promote our sites together! (Come
up with your own grabber)
Recently, I visited your website and was impressed
by what I saw. I am
contacting you about something that will help us both promote our
websites.
I would like to exchange links with your website.
As you may or may not know “link popularity” is one of the things
the search engines consider when ranking websites.
Doing a link exchange, between our websites, will assist both of
us in getting better rankings.
I have already put a link on my site to your site.
The URL is as follows:
URL:
My website is:
URL:
Here is the link that I would like on your site:
(Put the link to your website here and a
description, too.)
Let me know if this is something you would like to
do.
Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you,
(your name)
How to
Implement Your Link Exchange Invitations
Send an email to each website’s owner or
webmaster. Personalize it as much as possible to make sure it is read.
“Dear Webmaster” is not as good as “Dear Paul”. I suggest that
you send out 5 to 6 per week. After 2 weeks check on the ones you
haven’t heard from to see if they put
How Many
Links Should You Have?
How many links should you have: 2 or 3, maybe 50 or
100 or more?
Actually, the minimum is 10 to 12. You should have
more, but the search engines require at least that many.
Sending out your invitations for a link exchange
can be done 5 to 10 at a time each week, so that should not be an
overload to you.
Programming
the Link Exchange into Your Site
There are several things to consider when adding a
link to your website.
1.
What web page to put the link on
2.
What to make the text link
3.
What to put into the Hyperlink URL
4.
Bringing up a new browser
What Web Page to Put the Link On
You could put all your link exchange links on one
page. It is not a very
effective way to do the link exchange for you, your link exchange
partner, or the visitor to your site.
A more effective way is to put the link on a page
that is relevant to that link. By
relevant we mean relevant to the keyword or keyword phrase you are
optimizing that particular page around.
(You should recall this concept from the lessons on search
engines.)
This makes sense from the visitor’s point of view
because it is content congruent. It
makes sense to your link exchange partner because it fits into a “bump
and click” strategy. (The
visitor bumps into the link as he or she goes through your web pages and
clicks if interested.)
And it makes sense to you because you position your
web site to be of greater assistance to your visitors.
They, therefore, are more likely to come back and tell others
about its usefulness.
What to Make the Text Link
Make the text link (again, another concept you
should remember from search engines) the key word or key word phrase for
this page.
What to Put into the Hyperlink URL
This is going further than you have to at this
time, but it won’t hurt and will probably assist you with the search
engines. And knowing how the
programmers tend to work (those “little anal buddies” that like that
“mystic control” on how our pages rank) it would not surprise us
that at some point that they would require such a move.
A quick review of this strategy is as follows:
after the last character of the address in the hyperlink URL and before
the close quotation marks insert your cursor and type in the pound
symbol (#) without the parenthesis followed by your key word or phrase.
Bringing Up a New Browser
When doing a link exchange, and this is true for
affiliate links, you place on your website, it is best to set up the
link so that a new browser is brought up on your visitor’s monitor.
This way your visitor never leaves your site.
When your visitor is done looking at the link exchange site or
your affiliate and then clicks the “x” to close the window, s/he is
returned to your web page.
The way to program that link is as follows.
At the end of the link and still within your angle brackets you
add the following – target=”_blank”.
Your code for the hyper link would look like this,
putting in the actual web page address for the example one below.
<a href=”http://www.pagetogoto.com”
target=”_blank”>
This way you retain control of your visitor and
they return to your website when done.
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