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By Darryl DeLong
Reciprocal links are an important step in your overall plan to
get site visitors.
What are they? Reciprocal links are mutual links you and some
other web site owner agree to post on your respective sites.
Why are they so important? It goes back to the basic nature of
the Internet. The Internet exists as an information medium. When you
go to a search engine, you are looking for links to the information
you need. The better information sources have already been found by
others, many of whom thought so much of those sources that they
placed links to them on their web site. So the number of other web
sites linking to a particular source of information, the better the
chance it is a good source of information. All the major search
engines take link popularity into account when they determine how to
rank the results of any search. The end result is that to get a good
ranking in the major search engines, an important step is to make
sure there are lots of other sites that link back to yours. And,
since the links are reciprocal, you will need to put a link to each
site that links to you. You can’t expect someone to link to you
unless you link to them.
All right, you say, I will get all my friends to put links to my
site on their sites. Not so fast! The number of links isn’t all that
matters! In addition to looking at the number of links that point to
your site, the search engines also examine the quality of those
links. Links from sites that are relevant to yours rank highest. If
you sell dog food, for example, some good sites to link to yours
would be pet toys, dog training, dog grooming, etc. Acquiring a lot
of links that don’t relate to your site not only doesn’t help your
search engine ranking, it will hurt it, because the search engines
will assume you are trying to fool them into thinking your site is
popular with a lot of “junk” links. Don’t worry, there are lots and
lots of relevant sites to do reciprocal linking with.
The number one ranking for any search term isn’t entirely
determined by the number of links to a site, but it is an important
factor. And, as you know, having a ranking in the top ten for a
search term will guarantee more visitors to your site. But in
addition to improving your chances of being found through search
engines, having links to your site on lots of other sites means you
will get exposure to many site visitors who look at the links page
or links section of a site for other related sites to visit. And,
the more places your name and site name pop up, the more you are
likely to be recognized as an authority on the topic of your
site.
So how do you go about building reciprocal links on your
site?
First of all you need to realize that reciprocal link building is
an ongoing process, not a one shot deal. It needs to be something
you continue to work on, although some of it can be automated. You
will want to build a links page on your site, where you will place
links to other sites which are also linking to you. Since you expect
your links page to grow, you should establish separate link
categories, all relating to the theme of your site. You can get an
inexpensive script for creating and managing a link directory at
Linking101.com, not to mention a lot of good, general information
about linking.
On your links page, be sure to include simple instructions for
anyone who wants to link with you. Many sites include a short piece
of HTML code including all your link information, ready to be placed
on the reciprocal sites links page. Be sure to place an easily-found
link to your links page on the main page of your site as well.
Now you are ready to go looking for relevant link partners, sites
that are complementary to yours, but not competitors. You can do it
the manual way, by doing searches on your site’s favorite keywords.
When you find a site, evaluate it for content relevant to your own,
evaluate its quality and note its search engine rank. If you have to
choose between a site that is ranked #2 and one that is #20, always
choose the higher ranked site. Look for the links page, where you
should find instructions on initiating links between your sites. If
you don’t find one, it usually isn’t worth your time to contact the
webmaster to inquire about links; go to the next one.
One method to speed up the process is to use a free service from
http://linkpopularity.com/.
From this site you can check the link popularity of your site. But,
you can also check which sites are linked to your competitors –
particularly your competitors with the high search engine ranking.
With that information, you can go to each of these sites and most
likely get a reciprocal link. A similar product, Link Survey, is
available at http://www.antssoft.com/linksurvey/index.htm.
Another system for speeding up the process is http://links4trade.com/. Although
not free, it also helps to manage the headache of link page
maintenance.
Link exchange services which claim to completely automate the
link exchange process can be found at http://www.powerlinks.com/ and
http://www.softbizscripts.com/link-exchange-script-features.php.
A quite amazing tool you might look at is called Zeus, at http://www.cyber-robotics.com/index.htm.
Zeus is an intelligent robot that builds a link directory and
creates reciprocal links for your web site. A free version is
available. You can also find a group of Zeus users ready to swap
links at http://www.zeuscollective.com/.
Regardless of how you do it, continue to pursue reciprocal links
and make it a part of your overall marketing strategy; you are sure
to find it rewarding!
About The Author
Darryl DeLong is a successful Internet Marketer and Ezine
Publisher. Learn how to build up your opt-in list, site visitors and
sales with my brand new ebook entitled "Viral Internet Marketing
Strategies" get a free copy here: http://www.viral-internet-marketing.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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