More and
more folks are realizing that building a solid themed reciprocal link
directory is an affordable and highly effective way to increase inbound
traffic. Not only is traffic generated through direct external links
but weight is also given to search engines, as they assume that your
website is more relevant. Relevant link building is clearly the
key, where spammers requesting any link they can get will lose out every
time. The more experienced you get in website promotion, the more you
will want to concentrate on quality links. Let's look at one or two
good rules to adhere to:
Only trade links with a website that:
- Shares
an interested audience
This is extremely important. If your website is about fly fishing
in Montana then linking to a site that sells Viagra is not going to
do you any favors. Just as importantly, when you do get offered a
link from a site that shares your audience, make sure they
are not linking to those Viagra sites!
- Has
a clearly visible text link to its link directory
I can't tell you how many times I get proposed a link trade with a
site that has told me they have already placed a link on their links
page. 50% of the time they have not placed a link and secondly there
is no clearly visible link to their links page from their home page.
What good is that to anyone? I can't get traffic from their site and
Google won't index either as it can't spider the page.
- Has
a links page with no more than 50 to 60 links displayed
Many webmasters have no idea that search engines abhor link farms
and will ban a page with an excessive amount of links. More importantly
they may not know that their links page is presently percieved as
a link farm. They have simply added too many links on one page. Keep
a links page to a minimum of say 50 links per page along with a keyword-laden
title and description and only link to others who follow this principle.
- Has
a Google pagerank not less than your own
This is a good rule of thumb. Clearly we would all love to trade links
with a 9/10 site. It simply ain't gonna happen if you are still at
1/10. Take a few baby steps and climb up the ladder. Once in a while
you might get a good 5 or 6 during the early stages. Just make sure
you don't link to zeros, especially if their page is chock full of
links. It may have been banned anyway.
- Has
a static html links page
Google doesn't rank pages particularly well that move around so try
to stay away from these! Be cautious of .asp or .php scripts even
though they may appear to be static. My rule of thumb is I will only
link to .html pages unless the pagerank is worth it.
I have one or two pet peeves as far as link proposal etiquette is
concerned. Here are a few things to take on board when proposing a
link trade:
- Place
a link before asking for a link
If you are going to propose a link trade to someone then add their
link first before you shoot off an e-mail. It shows you are serious,
professional and will give the recipient an incentive to trade back.
- Give
exact URL
When you propose a link trade state the exact page that they can find
their link on your site. I can't tell you how many times I get link
requests from people saying they have added a link back to me and
when I go to their directory I am hunting for 10 minutes trying to
find it! Very often I can't as they haven't added it yet! When you
propose a trade don't simply give the URL of your links directory
index page and say "you can find it in the appropriate category".
No no no! Give them the exact path so they can get to it in one click.
Time is precious.
- Don't
spam for link requests
Don't simply get a mailing list of websites and send a blanket e-mail
requesting a link trade. If I don't see my personal e-mail address
in the header of a link trade request I know it has been spammed and
they haven't even been to my site. I also know they haven't visited
my site because I have link proposal contact forms on all of them.
If they actually went there they would have filled out my form. Spammed
link requests don't go down well because they are usually from webmasters
who are trying to cut corners at every possible turn. Send a personal
e-mail to a site that you personally visit. (You can still use
software like Arelis
to help you find the sites and automate everything else).
- Keep
your proposal short & sweet
Long convoluted e-mails explaining "how trading links benefits
everyone" really aren't necessary. Keep your e-mail short and
to the point. Tell them where their link is, and exactly how they
should link to you.
- Don't
delete without good reason
Once you add a link it should remain on a static html page unless
there is good reason to delete it. If your partner has deleted his
link then by all means send an e-mail and give them an opportunity
to repair. If this is fruitless then go ahead and delete.
Lastly I want
to mention something that I think is extremely important regarding reciprocal
linking. I see way too many websites that have high pageranks on their
index pages and very often zeros on their links pages. Usually this is
because the links page is too many sub folders away. That and poor internal
linking is usually the problem. Webmasters only want to link to pageranked
sites if they are building a solid strategy, and quite rightly. Many webmasters
don't care too much about their own links page, simply assuming that they
are sending traffic away from their site. This is not the attitude to
take as the higher the pagerank on your links page the better external
link proposal you will get. The answer is to boost your links page in
popularity. There are two ways to do this:
1) Link to your partners index page AND reciprocal links page.
2) Link to a site map that displays all your links pages.
Lets look
at the first idea. No one has really adopted this idea yet and I'm very
surprised. The idea is that you link to your partner's home page and
next to that link you also add a link to the page that contains your
reciprocal link on your partner's page. In effect you are boosting the
popularity of the page that links back to you. If everyone did this
then links pages would rank higher, in turn giving more weight to the
link pointing back to you. I personally use Arelis
to trade links, a fantastic tool that actually puts the fun back into
an otherwise tedious task. At present there is no way to automate this
process using Arelis (and probably Zeus as far as I know) but I have
mentioned it to them and they are considering updating. As of now if
you use either of these programs you would have to manually add these
links once the pages are generated.
The second idea to boost your links page ranking is to create a new
page that ALL your internal pages link to. Let's call this new page
/site_map.html. On this site map web page you will display text links
and descriptions to every one of your themed link directory pages (making
sure again that you keep the number of links around 50 per page - otherwise
you will need to create a second site map page linked from the first).
Also Include links to all your other internal pages. Now place a little
text link to your site map on every page within your site. A
good place to do this is at the bottom of each page where you can link
from a little copyright sign. Something like this: ©
website-promotion-secrets.com Effectively you have boosted your
links page ranking even though it is only internally, something that
is still extremely valid to search engines. Now make sure that when
you create reciprocal links with external sites that you request they
link to your home and your links page. Something like this:
Used cars for sale - Domestic
and imported pre-owned cars by George Smith & Co. Link
back
Get the idea? The "Used Cars for sale" points to their
index page and the "Link back" points to the partner's
links page. Easy. However, this whole new idea might take a little time
to get around and until the big software programs adopt the principle,
it might not be anytime soon. Until then you might have to manually
add. Happy pagerank!
