Creating links from your site to other sites related to yours is a very important tactic for you to improve your search engine position and increase your site’s visibility.
This article gives you four ways to do that as well as how to check your site’s link popularity.
Basically there are two types of links to consider. One type of link is an inbound link, or back link, which is simply a link from another site pointing to your site.
All back links are good. It doesn’t matter if the content of the other site is similar or related to yours.
The other type of link involves a reciprocal link which means that your site and the other site have exchanged links which point to the other’s site. Good reciprocal links should be from sites which have similar related content.
The search engines may penalize you if you accept links that are not from sites with related content.
Here are four ways to located related sites with which you may want to exchange reciprocal links.
1) USE SEARCH ENGINES:
Do a simple search in any of the major search engines for keywords and terms which relate to your website and its content.
When you have located appropriate sites and reviewed them, send the webmaster an invitation message which you should have already created and saved in a drafts folder.
Your success with this method depends a lot on how you approach the selected websites. If possible, your message should be personalized with the webmaster’s name and the link information to their site which you have already posted on your site.
Of course you will also want to include your linking information for your site for them to post a reciprocal link to your site.
2) LOCATE COMPETITOR’S LINKS:
Discover who your competitors are on line and make some visits to their sites to determine who they are linking to. Review those links on their sites and make contact with them about reciprocal links to your site.
They are more likely to reciprocate with a link to your site since you have related content to them and a site with which they are already linked.
To locate your competition, just do a search on one of the major search engines using the keywords for your site.
3) BUILD RELATIONSHIPS:
Building relationships with other sites which are similar to yours in content can be an effective way to build some good, solid, effective links.
Get acquainted with the webmaster by subscribing to their newsletter and contributing articles to it. Send them ideas, suggestions and comments about their site. Offer testimonials for the products or services they offer. Provide a link on your site to theirs and ask for a reciprocal link. These are just a few ways to become a trusted ally and almost always get a reciprocal link.
While it is not the quickest or most efficient way to get links, it may be the most certain way to end with great, relevant links to other sites.
4) THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE & SERVICES:
There are some very helpful services and software available for locating linking partners. It is not the aim of this article to recommend any of these, but rather point out that it is an option for you to consider.
Alexa offers a free enhanced toolbar which you can add to your browser. It’s most important feature is the ability to estimate how much traffic any given site receives. This can be valuable when determining which sites to approach about reciprocal links.
http://www.alexatoolbar.com/site/download
A search with words like “linking software,” “link tools,” or similar terms will produce a variety of sites for you to examine.
MEASURE YOUR LINK POPULARITY:
Link popularity is the total number and quality of links that point to your site. Search engines are looking just for links to your site that may be useless.
Do you know what sites link to you now? You can find out here:
http://www.AddMe.com/popularity.htm
Knowing who links to your site and increasing the amount of good, quality links is an important part of any website promotion.
In Summary, there is a lot to learn about linking strategies. This article is not meant to be all-inclusive, but instead a starting point for you to build links that are effective and valuable.
