Basic Strategies for your Link Exchange Program
Part 2 of "Creating a Successful
Link Exchange Program"
by Rick Hendershot,
www.small-business-online.com
In the
first article in this series I
described why links are important, and why creating a link exchange program
should be an important part of any serious website promotion effort. In this
article I want to outline some simple strategies for building a large number
of inbound links.
What can you achieve with a strong Link
Exchange program?
An aggressive link exchange program is
based on very clear objectives. Don't fall into the trap (as I sometimes have)
of thinking of your link directory as "a useful resource for my visitors". As
the web gets larger and more complicated, these visitor-oriented directories
are becoming more difficult to maintain, and less relevant to the surfing
habits of web users. Often they are just ways of sending your visitors off to
look at somebody else's site.
View your directory as a means of creating
traffic for your site. In other words, always ask yourself "What's in it
for me to exchange links with this other site?". You should be expecting every
link to give you at least one of these three things:
- Direct traffic, especially from some of the
high-traffic inbound links.
- Increased Google Page Rank compliments of
the PR of the inbound links (I explain this below).
- Improved Search Engine placement for your
most important keywords.
Keep these things in mind as you go about
exchanging links, because if you can't get any of these three things from a
link, then there is not much point in going after it.
Who should you link with?
If you understand (and agree with) what I
said in the previous section, then you will see how some links are more
valuable than others. So it's those high-value links you should be going
after.
But what determines the "value" of a link?
Primarily three things:
- The "relevance" of the page linking to you.
This is a fancy way of saying the page linked to you shares the same or
similar subject matter as your page.
- The Google "Page Rank" of the page linking
to yours. A higher PR means Google considers that page more important for its
subject matter, and links from higher PR pages will result in your own PR (and
search engine ranking) being enhanced.
- The amount of traffic the other page gets.
This is usually hard to gauge, but it is obvious that if you want to get
direct traffic from inbound links, they will have to be on pages that people
actually look at.
In other words, you should be going after
links from relevant sites that have a decent PR rating, and that get some real
live traffic. You don't need all three of these things for every link. But
the more links you can get that do well in these areas, the better your own
site will be for it.
Getting ready to start your Link Exchange
program
Before you start you will need a couple of
tools. First, you should get the Google
Tool Bar. This will help you do Google searches, see the Page Rank of
possible link partners, and check on "back links" of various pages. I will
explain these things further in the third part of this article. For now, just
download and install the Google Tool Bar.
Second, you may want to get the
Alexa toolbar. One of the features of the
toolbar is to give you what are called "Alexa rankings". These are traffic
rankings which are primarily based on surfing stats
derived from Alexa's installed
base of toolbar users. Yes, it is true that Alexa rankings are skewed towards
Alexa users, and can be manipulated by almost anyone caring to do it. Still,
the Alexa ranking is becoming one of
the most important tools we webmasters have for watching the progress of our
sites as we develop and try to drive traffic to them.
Third, get a good old-fashioned notebook and pen. As you
begin your search for link partners you will find yourself overwhelmed by all
the possible candidates. You will stumble on a beautifully rich list of
relevant sites. Then you will follow one of those links, and find another
incredibly broad range of possibilities. Meanwhile, the first list will be
gone. The best advice is to make a note of possible link partners as you come
across them. When you see an interesting looking list of prospects, write it
down.
Create your link directory
The fourth thing you should do is organize your own link
directory — the one you intend to create on your own site. You should not just
lump all your links together on one or two pages. Create some simple
categories and spread them over two or three pages. For some ideas on what
categories might work for you, check out a couple of your competitors, or look
at one of the big online directories (for example,
Yahoo, DMOZ,
Jayde), although you may find this more
confusing than useful.
A good rule of thumb is to put only about 50 links on a
given page. If you set as a target to have between 100 and 200 links, that
means you should end up with somewhere between 2 and 4 pages in your link
directory.
Create your link text
And fifth, create your own link text — the text you're going
to ask your link partners to place on their site. Don't be shy about this.
Remember, a link is essentially a free advertisement on someone else's site
pointing back to yours. So give it some ad-like features. For starters, make
sure your "anchor text" includes your most important keyword. Google considers
this quite important. For example here is the text link I use for one of my
clients:
Free Card business card
displays
The Free Card business card display system is a unique small business
opportunity. Free Card displays are located in high traffic areas and loaded
with full color business cards on behalf of advertisers. Cards are
automatically dispensed to interested consumers.
Notice that the anchor text is not simply "www.freecard.com"
(the URL) or even FreeCard.com (what some might consider the "site name") but
rather a description of the product, including the most important keyword,
"business card displays". Further, I have built more of this client's most
important keywords into the description accompanying the anchor text. This
enhances the "relevance" of the link page where your link appears.
Create more than one version of this link text. A "long" one
should be roughly 200 characters. A short one might be less than 100
characters. Having two or three different versions and lengths of your link
text ready to go will make your life a lot easier when it comes to actually
exchanging links.
And now that we have all that out of the way, in the next
part of this article I will tell you how to actually go out and get those 100
valuable link partners.
For other articles in this series go to
http://www.small-business-online.com/articles/link-exchange.
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Rick Hendershot is based in Conestogo, Ontario, Canada. He spent many years as
an advertising consultant, and small business owner, and currently publishes
several golf, travel, and small business websites and ezines, including Small
Biz Tips. He can be reached at
rh@small-business-online.com.
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