Reciprocal Linking Strategy

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 engine's 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 ensure 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 website.

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.

About The Author: BizAtomic - http://www.bizatomic.com -
800-942-9475