Exchanging Links - Get the right sites to link to your website by
Francois du Toit
Most people are aware of the fact that GoogleT is by far the most important
search engine in the world today. Many webmasters have also heard that having
other websites post links to your website should improve your rankings in the
search engines, especially in GoogleT. This is certainly true. The problem is
that many webmasters do not know the correct way of soliciting links from other
sites.
Why is it important that other sites link to yours? It can be seen as a sort of
confirmation that one site values the content of another site. When you find a
site on the net that is useful because it has good content that you are
interested in you normally save it as a favorite. The same principle applies to
website links. The more sites link to your site the higher the perceived value
of your site on the net and that has a direct impact on your site's ranking.
There are many sites on the internet that exist for only one reason and that is
to show webmasters how they can improve their search engine rankings by using
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. I do not want to comment too much
on SEO sites except to say that although there are some very good SEO sites on
the net I have found most of them to have no value at all. However, one thing
that most SEO sites agree upon is the importance of having incoming links to
your site in order to improve your site's rankings in the search engines.
I am often surprised at how many people follow the advice of SEO sites on how
they can improve their site's ranking in GoogleT without even considering what
GoogleT has to say on this topic. Nevertheless, GoogleT is very clear on the
importance of incoming links.
Take the time to read the "Webmaster Guidelines" issued by GoogleT. You can
find these valuable guidelines at www.google.com/support/webmasters and then
click on "Webmaster Guidelines". They are very clear.
In principle, links should come from sites with content that is relevant to
your own site. It can be similar or complementary. These sites should link to
your site because they find your site's content valuable and consider it to be
useful for their own visitors
There are mainly two ways of soliciting links from other webmasters:
The one is by looking for sites with content that is relevant to your own site
and requesting these webmasters to post a link to your site. You normally need
to give them your site's title, website address and a short description of what
your site is all about in order for them to consider adding your link on their
site. It is normal that they often request you to first post a link on your
site linking back to their site (and provide them with the link address to
verify you have placed the link) before considering linking to yours. Many of
these sites will invite other webmasters on their home page to link to their
site or inform other webmasters that they are open to exchange links (called
reciprocal links) with suitable sites.
The above method is the correct method of getting other webmasters to link to
your site. I like to refer to is as the straight and narrow road - Not always
easy and certainly time-consuming but the best method.
The second method that webmasters often use to get other sites to link to them
is to visit so-called "link farms". These sites normally place adverts like:
"Get thousands of other sites to link to your site for the low price of only $
10", or "Exchange links now with thousands of other sites", etc. Sounds good?
Sure it does. It is the easy way. However, it is not the correct way. The
intention of these sites is to mislead the search engines by creating the
impression that your site is very popular. Companies like GoogleT are fully
aware of these "tricks". They will know if you get your incoming links from
link farms and these type of links will certainly not help your site's
credibility as far as search engines are concerned. Avoid link farms at all
cost!
Please note that not all webmasters are prepared to exchange links. Some of the
very popular sites receive so many requests to exchange reciprocal links that
they either refuse to post any new links or insist that your site must have a
certain GoogleT page rank before they will consider exchanging links. Some of
these sites will even charge you a monthly fee for having your link on their
site. Do not get discouraged. There are many good websites that will gladly
exchange links with your site at no cost.
In case you are wondering, GoogleT ranks website pages from 1 up to 10, where a
page rank of 10 is an indication that GoogleT considers it as very important.
Most website pages on the internet do not have a page rank at all. It takes
time to get a page rank. It can take years to get a high page rank. There are
many sites that offer a free page rank checker. I can recommend
www.prchecker.info. Try to exchange links with sites that have a high page
rank, at least higher than your own website's home page. Having incoming links
from "important" sites are always an advantage.
Lastly, it is easy to check how many sites are linking to your site. Once again
there are many sites that offer this service for free. I can recommend
www.webmaster-toolkit.com.
Do not try to convince too many sites to exchange links with your site. Take
your time and do not force anything. Remember that having excellent content on
your own site is the best incentive for any webmaster to link to your site. Do
not make the mistake of chasing after links while neglecting the content of
your site.
About the Author
Francois du Toit is the owner of http://www.2sl.com,
a website designed to help new entrepreneurs succeed by evaluating various
online and offline business opportunities, affiliate programs and network
marketing options. The website also offers free articles and tools that will
assist webmasters in building profitable websites. Visit
http://www.2sl.com to subscribe to the free newsletter and receive
Allan Gardyne's report "77 Ways to
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