DEVELOPING YOUR STRATEGY FOR RECIPROCAL LINKING

Your website is your shop-front in the online marketplace, getting customers to your page is more than a matter of advertising: it’s a question of rank. If you’re ready to increase visitor hits and drive traffic to your site, you’ll need to put together an excellent linking strategy. If you’ve worked in online marketing for years, or if you’re a newcomer to web business, your site will benefit from highly target traffic directed to your site gained through our recommended linking strategies.

One of the most popular primary linking strategies is reciprocal linking, and is a great place to start in your bid to drive traffic to your site. By reciprocal linking, you’re agreeing to host a link to another website, which will in turn link back to you. Choosing to link with sites that have similar themes or content as yours will allow you to build a library of links that bring new visitors and encourage them to bookmark your site for access to your link directory. In reciprocally linking with many websites, you raise the profile of your site with search engines; these engines determine your relevancy to a search request in part by the number of sites that link to yours.

Keep in mind that one well chosen reciprocal link is better that ten sites linked to you and back just for volume, and courtesy begs that you are linked back to by partners from pages with as few links as possible. As with so many things, keep quality over quantity in mind. Selecting a link partner with content relating to yours is a nod to the interests of your visitors and shows a commitment to the information your site carries and the validity of the information recommended through the links.

At the end of the day, linking is one of the building blocks of the web- helping the browsing population to move from site to site while continuing in the same theme of information as they started with. Ideally, a page will be built with more information and resources than a visitor could hope to exhaust, and would be one-way linked to by countless related sites. In reality, most sites could not approach that amount of data, and in today’s world of web advertising, reciprocal linking is the closest we can get.

Getting your reciprocal linking campaign off the ground begins with convincing webmasters to link to your site. Consider the usability of your site, compare it to competing sites, review the content and update every aspect to make it as relevant to its theme as possible. Build a page of quality outgoing links that are not just related to the material but reliable and valid for your visitors.

Take a look at what’s out there that can relate back to your site, identify sources that are specific to your industry and categorize the blogs, zines, news sites and other sites by either searching in your own time or choosing from the countless software tools created specifically to search for pertinent sites. These software tools can prepare letters and collect the email addresses of webmasters hosting sites like yours and contact them to request your link go up on their page.

Look at software like PowerLinks.com, Hot Links SQL, Links4Trade, Links Manager,Linking 101 Linking Management Script, Zeus Internet Marketing Robot, Arelis Reciprocal Link Solution and LinkMaster Pro; these products and others will put you on the path to reciprocal linking.

Be sure that you have visited the sites uncovered by your search programs at least once before contact, and determine if they thoroughly agree with the material on your site. Remember that this is only a springboard into the market; long term link popularity will always be held by sites that can deliver value to their visitors consistently.

One of the best resources you can use is Google, which will ensure that your linking partners are properly linked thanks to their relevancy algorithm (called PageRank™) which measures the relevance of the content in its search along with other elements such as the proximity and volume of keywords in your search, as well as the importance of the sites linked to yours.

Directories that are human based, such as the Open Directory project ask that you list your site in a category and with an accurate description to make it more relevant to searchers. Because search engines need to maintain as up to date listings as possible, they will change their algorithms without notice which can send your rank plummeting in a matter of minutes. In these cases it is even more important to regularly maintain your site and update its content often.

Be wise when it comes to your website! Treat your reciprocal linking strategy as you would any marketing campaign, and your website as the product. Keep a record of the interaction you’ve had with linking partners, whether they’ve agreed to reciprocally link with you and check back regularly to be sure the site still carries your link, as some unscrupulous webmasters will swap out or drop your link without warning. By monitoring your strategy and adapting as needed, you can easily boost the amount of visits to your site and build a great reputation at the same time.

For more information and advice about link building go to our search engine optimization section of our site and see how we can help.