Reciprocal Linking Strategy

Article from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com

If you want to get serious about driving more traffic to your
website and improving your search engine rankings you need to
develop a linking strategy. There are three primary linking
strategies:

  1. Reciprocal Linking
  2. Purchasing text links
  3. Employing a link finding service

This month's issue of BizAtomic Advisor focuses on Reciprocal
Linking – How it can help. When a trusted site links to yours,
people follow that recommendation.

Reciprocal link means your website links to another website and
that website links back to you. Search engines use link
popularity to rank websites. Exchanging reciprocal links with
other sites will build a great link directory that will
motivate visitors to bookmark your website to get access to
your link directory.

One of the factors search engines use to determine your
relevancy to a search term is the number of websites linking to
your website. This is an effective way to increase your search
engine rankings.

Three key success factors for a reciprocal linking strategy
are:

  1. Quality of links should outweigh quantity
  2. Link partners must relate to your site content
  3. Partners should link to you from pages listing as few
     links as possible

Linking is what the web is all about. It helps you move from
one document to another and from site to site while maintaining
your focus on a particular subject. The ideal situation is to
have one way links from related sites without you pointing back
to them. However, you would have to have a lot of valuable
information, tips, tools, articles, resources, etc. in order to
motivate people to link to your website. Unfortunately most
sites don't fall into this category and reciprocal linking is a
requirement.

Step 1 - Get people to want to link to your website. Generating
quality inbound links to your website requires a systematic
approach and hard work. But the payoff is worth it. To begin
with you must have good content on your website. Step one is to
analyze the value of your content in relation to competitors.
You will also need a page of outbound links on your website
that visitors will find valuable.

Step 2 – Research websites that are worth linking to and that
will bring relevant traffic to you. You need to identify the
portals, directories, news sites, ezines, blogs, and other
information sources specific to your industry. You can let your
fingers do the walking across the keyboard or you can purchase
one of the many software tools on the market designed to locate
relevant sites. They also help collect email addresses and even
prepare letters requesting that a site add a link to your site.
Without making any recommendations you may want to look into the
following tools:

  * Arelis Reciprocal Link Solution
  * Zeus Internet Marketing Robot
  * Linking 101 Linking Management Script
  * Duncan Carver's Link Management System
  * Hot Links SQL V2.3
  * LinkMaster Pro
  * Links Manager
  * Links4Trade
  * PowerLinks.com

Make sure you at least visit the sites these tools generate.
However, the best way to build long-term link popularity is to
offer good content and features providing real value to your
visitors. People will discover your website.

Google is a great help with your research because it ensures
your partners are properly indexed. Look for sites closely
related to you in terms of theme and keywords. Google's ranking
algorithm takes into account each link's importance along with
other factors like the proximity of your search keywords in the
documents. In other words, it's not just about the number of
sites that link to a given page, but also the importance of
those sites (measured by the links to each of them). Google has
given a name to its ranking algorithm for determining a web
page's importance; it's called PageRank(TM) .

Human based directories like Yahoo and the Open Directory
project have a lot of influence over search results. List your
site in the correct category with a good description.

Next, make sure you are linked to and from topic specific and
niche directory websites. These are sites that provide
information that is an exact match for what you provide.

Don't forget partners and vendors from your business. Since you
already have a relationship you are more likely to be able to
request and receive a link from their websites.

Step 3 – Implementing your strategy. Like any marketing
campaign you need a plan.

  * Set business benefit objectives for your Linking strategy.
    Think about what you are trying to achieve and write it
    down on paper.

  * Develop a content plan for populating your website with
    valuable content.

  * Set linking policies, pages, and linking code you can give
    to link partners for your site.

  * Monitor the progress of your linking strategy so that you
    can see what results have been achieved and adapt or tweak
    what you are doing to improve results.

  * Benchmark your site's link popularity against competitors

A Reciprocal Linking Program will require that you manage the
following:

  1.The name of the site

  2.The URL

  3.The name and email address of the person who runs the site

  4.The date you contact the person who runs the site and the
    date he or she responds

  5. The resulting deal (Some will say yes, some will say no,
     others will not reply at all, others will want a link back
     from you, some may want money for links, some will be out
     of town and take weeks to reply, etc.)

  6. The status of the deal

  7. Verifying that the link is in place

  8. Checking the site periodically for the link (Yes, some
     folks swap links and then pull yours for odd reasons.)

Remember the most important benefit of a link exchange is the
traffic resulting directly from these links. Search engines are
highly unpredictable. They keep changing their algorithms every
now and then. Your site is on the top 10 results today, but it
may not be so tomorrow. Of course, you don't want to exclude
search engine optimization but your main concern should be
getting traffic from direct links.
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