Introduction to Link Exhange - Part 2 by Al Bert
How to Link In the first part I looked at Link Exchange generally. Now I'll take
you through the fun part of actually obtaining useful relevant backlinks. If
you are convinced about the benefits of linking, the question in your mind must
be - "Yes, but how do I go about obtaining incoming or backlinks?". There are
various ways you can go about this, depending on whether you are seeking pure
backlinks - the best kind; or whether you are prepared to settle for reciprocal
links - the most common; or whether you want to do someone a favor and give
them free publicity by unilaterally placing an outbound link on your site
without one in return - the easiest to do - just to it.
One Way Backlinks
A backlink can only be obtained if there is website that carries your link
without one in return. This happens when your site is linked in an article,
directory, by request, or cited as an authority or resource site by another due
to its superior content.
Content
When a website has fresh, unique, informative and interesting content, when it
is a recognized resource in as given area, other sites will naturally link to
it if only to raise the profile of their own. For you as the webmaster, there
is the double bonus of not having to communicate with the linking site. In
practice, the context in which your link is carried would in all likelihood be
complimentary to you further raising your profile.
The search engines in order to improve the relevance of their SERPs are
constantly on the lookout for such sites. Websites that achieve consistently
high search positions do so because of the content aspect of their sites.
Articles
Writing and syndicating articles is probably the most effective way to obtain
one way inbound links. In recent months this has become all the rage as
blogging has taken on force of its own. The idea behind all this frenzied
literary activity is not a new enlightenment, but the opportunity for people
like you to plaster their website links in as many places as possible. One guy
claimed to have had an article he wrote carried by 17000 websites, ezines,
article directories etc. This would have greatly boosted his "link popularity",
organic targeted traffic, and overall business prospects - assume just 1% of
the visitors and readers of all those websites and ezines clicked on his link -
lots of traffic!
Directories
These days there are lots and lots of website directories on every theme
imaginable. While they vary in the way they operate, they all have the effect
of creating one way incoming links to your site, which as we have seen is both
a source of direct organic traffic as well as a boon to your search engine
defined link popularity.
The more significant the directory the more beneficial the link from them will
be. A basic objective for seasoned webmasters is to get their sites indexed by
and included in the DMOZ, and Yahoo! directories. These are the two major
online website directories, and inclusion in either would be of greater benefit
than inclusion in many of the smaller ones.
Request
These days, most webmasters will only consider a reciprocal link exchange.
However, there are still a few webmasters who would consider a one way outbound
link if they considered it beneficial to their own visitors, depending on the
nature of their website. These will typically be personalized sites, intranets,
or non- directory information sources.
Peruse such sites carefully to assess fit, and if satisfied that the website
complements your own, contact the webmaster as politely as possible and request
that they carry your link as well. Invite them to visit your site to make their
own assessment, and do not be put off if they request a reciprocal link in
return. However you will get the occasional webmaster who will not object to a
one way link. Give it a shot - what's to lose?
Reciprocal Links
As the term suggests, reciprocal links are a mutual exchange of links with
another website. They constitute the vast majority of links found on the
internet, and are established by mutual arrangement.
So how do I get websites to link with me?
Identifying Link Partners
The first thing is to identify websites that would make suitable link partners.
These are sites that complement your own, and therefore have a similar visitor
profile to the type you are looking for. For instance a website selling health
food might link up with a website about physical fitness. Be creative about
your choices; set up a spread sheet to keep track of your approaches.
Visit the top 10 or 20 sites ranked in Google and Yahoo! for your keywords and
do some research on their link partners. You will find not only do they have
several link partners, but partners that are quality sites for their content,
linking strategy, aesthetic appeal and so on. These are the sites you should
target for a link exchange request.
Note : The major search engines are reducing the number of links they'll show
for each site, to cut down on search engine spamming. You may thus find a
specialized tool is necessary. A good one for his purpose would be
SEO Elite which is a complete reciprocal links exchange management
tool.
Assess the sites you short-list for their relevance and complementarities to
your own. Ensure that they are quality sites (if they are link partners of the
top ten sites in your niche they generally will be, but take nothing for
granted).
Assess them for:
Linking Website - this is the specific website linking to the rival websites in
your niche that you are benchmarking. In order to find all of the websites that
link to them you can do a couple of things. The most common way is to go to
Google and enter this search criteria: link:www.targetedwebsite.com. Once you
do this Google will return a large list of websites that link to
targetedwebsite.com. As noted above, you'll get a larger list by going to
Yahoo! and entering link:http:// targetedwebsite.com.
Note: that for Yahoo you must include http://
Anchor Text used - is the actual text used within the link linking to the
specified website. For example, the anchor text in the following link would be
"health food". Health food website
Page Rank -is the actual Google Page Rank of the webpage linking to
targetedwebsite.com. In order to see the Google Page Rank, you'll need to
download and install the Google Toolbar for free from:
http://toolbar.google.com
Link Popularity -is the number of links that are pointing to each of the
webpages pointing to targetedwebsite.com. The more the merrier. You can find
their Google link popularity by entering this search command into Google:
link:www.targetedwebsite.com then counting the total number of results that are
shown OR you could go to a website like www.linkpopularity.com to find each
link partners link popularity much more quickly.
Page Title - is the title of the page that is linking to targetedwebsite.com.
Does it contain the main keyword(s) for your niche? If so, you should note the
url (web address) of those pages. You'll want to approach those websites and
try to get them to link to your website.
* Getting links from webpages that contain your main keyword in the page title
is extremely powerful and is something many people often overlook.
Number of Outbound Links - is the number of links located on the webpage
linking to targetedwebsite.com. The fewer links there are located on the page,
the more a link from them would increase your ranking.
Once we've collected all of the information, we now can see
targetedwebsite.com's linking strategy. We'll need to calculate the percentage
of websites that contain the main keywords/phrases in the page title, the
percentage of websites that contain the main keywords in the actual anchor text
linking to targetedwebsite.com.
You'll have to do this for the top 10-20 websites in your keyword niche in
order to properly establish the most beneficial websites to seek link exchanges
with.
The most beneficial sites will be those that:
Allow you to specify the anchor text that will be used in their link to your
website.
Websites with a PR OF 4 or more - don't get too hung up on page rank though.
Websites that will preferably carry your link in a relevant page. Failing that,
a website that has a well-organized links page with a visible and hopefully
prominent link in the navigation bar, so that visitors can find it easily.
Should the website use a special links page, then ensure that it carries no
more than 30 links, otherwise the PR benefit from that links page will be so
diluted as make it worthless. Also, there'll be too many links competing with
yours to get any significant traffic boost.
Making Your Link Request
Now that you have established the websites you want to link with, you need go
out and actually ask them. How you do this will determine whether your linking
campaign will be effective or not; it would be a great pity to do all the work
above only to mess it up with a shoddy links exchange request.
Firstly, websites that are worth linking to receive hundreds of link requests.
In order to get your request any attention, prepare well so that it stands out
from the crowd. You want to show the webmaster that you have taken the time to
peruse his website and that your links exchange request is well considered. You
need to convince him/her that your website would make a good fit with their
own, that it is interesting and his/her own visitors would find it useful and
beneficial. You also want to make it as easy as possible for them to link up
with your site.
When you write the links exchange request letter, personalize it by using the
webmaster's first name if you can find it on his/her site, make sure you have
specified the website's name, and note and comply with any instructions the
website may have for exchanging links e.g. a web-based form, a code to cut and
paste on to your site and so on. Failing to do so would not just be irritating;
it shows that you have not really browsed the site.
Be creative and bold with your email subject header. Being timid and using a
generic subject header like "Link Request" will probably see your email deleted
unread. Explicitly state which page you'd like your link carried on and why.
Oftentimes, interestingly, you'll get your links request approved without a
corresponding links exchanged. Some webmasters will consider either that it may
not make sense for them to have their link on your site, or that your site is a
valuable enough addition to their site without a link in return. Most time
though a reciprocal exchange will result.
Do not balk at approaching your competitors. Since no two business entities are
identical, it is possible for competing websites to carry each others links and
still benefit from the total traffic carried by all. Imagine sites that sell
unique and therefore hard to find gift items. While obvious competitors, if a
browser fails to find what they're looking for on one site, they may find it on
the other, and vice-versa.
Page Rank
A word about Page Rank. PR is a measure of a website's significance derived and
used by certain search engines chiefly Google. While a positive indicator, you
should not get too hung up on it when identifying link partners. PR is gained
and lost often (every 3 months or so) so current PR is no indicator of future
trends. Further, PR is largely an indicator of link popularity, is obscure in
its derivation, and does not tell you how suitable a website is as a link
partner. Use it as an indicative measure rather than a deciding factor.
Google PR increases as your link popularity does. Do not worry that your own
new website will have a low PR. This will invariably increase with more links.
More important for the new website is building links with quality websites many
of which will have low PR anyway, but websites that have the type of traffic
your site needs.
Summary
The process of building links with other websites is time-consuming at the best
of times, and if done correctly can get quite tedious. However, since it
requires communication with other webmasters, it has the potential to be
engaging and absorbing. Approach it confidently if you are satisfied with your
own site, remembering that even a link that brings you just 5 visitors a day
will add up to over 8000 over 5 years.
Every backlink is worth taking time over, and just like your website itself, is
never really finished - they will require tweaking every so often.
Enjoy
About the Author
Al Bert is the owner of
http://seoelite.mywebhut.com. Visit his website to discover the
best link exchange management software. </em></font>
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