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Reciprocal
Linking for Internet Marketing
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. So, should you or should you not get involved
in reciprocal linking?
Ultimately, the decision
is yours but here are some guidelines:
1. 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.
2. 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.
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. 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.
5. 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.
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.
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.
1howto.com
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