What to Look For in a Link Partner - Lesson 3

CREATING A SUCCESSFUL LINK PROGRAM - Part 3

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A LINK PARTNER

by Rick Hendershot,
Linknet Publishing Network - http://www.sbo-linknet.com

In this lesson we review the objectives of a fruitful link
acquisition program, and we suggest "Who you should link with."

WHAT YOU CAN ACHIEVE WITH A STRONG LINK PROGRAM

Rule #1 is that you should view your link acquisition program as a means of creating traffic for your site.

In other words, always ask yourself "What's in it for me to get a
link from site X, or exchange links with site Y?". You should be
expecting every link to give you at least one of three things:

Follow up:

1. Direct traffic, especially from some of the high-traffic inbound links.

2. Increased Google Page Rank compliments of the PR of the inbound links.

3. Improved Search Engine placement for your most important
keywords.

Keep these things in mind as you go about building 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. It is those high-value links you should be going after.

But what determines the "value" of a link?

Primarily three things:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

In Lesson 4 we will look at some of the methods you can use to
create a Successful Link Program.

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