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RECIPROCAL LINKING

For the foreseeable future the only way of ensuring that you get quality traffic to your site is through the proper use of search engine technology. Spend some time reading the following articles which will give you a broad overview of how to get to the top of the various search engines:

Article 1: Search Engine Optimization.

Article 2: Top Search Engines.

Article 3: Search Engine Submission.

Article 4: Reciprocal Linking.

Article 5: Meta Tags.

Reciprocal Linking

How many reciprocal links should I get?

Get one link to your website from someone who is already listed with Google and the spider will follow that link to your site. This may get you into Google but your ranking will probably be so low it won’t matter. Reciprocal links are a very important component for your placement in Google (and others). It's a popularity contest!

Google and Inktomi both use linking analysis to weigh your websites overall importance and thereby determine your pagerank for specific keywords. By analyzing how pages link to each other, they try to assign a rank to your page based on the quantity and quality of others linking to you. Before you run off and join a link farm, yes, they do use techniques to exclude obvious attempts to boost your pagerank. Getting a high quantity of incoming links is not enough. You want links from sites that have a high pagerank themselves. These are deemed to be a higher “quality” reciprocal links.

How do I get other websites to link to me?

If you give, you will receive. It is a time consuming task to build a good quality reciprocal links campaign but the rewards are worth it. Find other sites that are similar or complementary in content to your site. Put a link on your site pointing to them. Email the site and ask for a link back to your site. Yes, this will be the time consuming part. (This is where your time is better spent rather than obsessing about meta-tags and other search engine optimization tricks.)

Try to personalize the email request as much as possible. Tell them you have put a link to their site and give the URL where it can be viewed. Ask them to link back to you and don’t forget to give them your description and URL.

Don’t assume that having a huge links page is all you need. You need to exercise quality control.

Choose wisely. Visit the website you want to link to and make certain it is relevant to your topic. Also, check the page rank of the site and make sure they are important to Google. Download the Google toolbar for your browser and when you visit websites, the toolbar will tell you how high Google ranks a page. Make a rule to only choose websites that have a pagerank of “xx” or above. Remember, quality is more important than quantity. If these websites agree to link back to you, it only takes a few highly ranked sites to boost your pagerank.

Keep it short. Put up additional links pages if you need to but don’t put hundreds of links on one page. Use a system to categorize the links. You should link the page from your home page but it can be a small text link that the spiders can follow.

Track your link partners. After you request a link from one of the websites you selected, wait a week. If you don’t get a response, email them again. Be polite, but if they don’t link back after a second request then move on and find someone else. Remove the link and add a new prospect. When a site does agree to link back to you, make sure you record this information so you don’t accidentally remove their link. You should periodically check to make sure they do the same.

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