Secrets of Reciprocal Linking Strategies
by Ed Duvall

Whether you're new to the internet or a seasoned online marketer, developing
a plan to increase the number of reciprocal links back to your website can help
you bring more highly targeted traffic to your website as well as improve your
ranking in the search engines.

Link popularity is becoming an increasingly important criteria for better search
engine ranking. So the better your popularity, the better your ranking. You may be
thinking that you'll loose traffic to your website if you link to other websites. Sure,
that can and will happen, but you should gain as many or more NEW visitors that
you not have otherwise visited your site.

Keep in mind that in addition to more visitors via linking that another big benefit here
is a potential increase in your websites' Search Engine positioning. As an online business
owner you realize that their are a variety of advertising and web promotion techniques
you have available to you. Linking to other websites is a well know but little used tool
that can produce significant traffic for your website as long as it is done properly.

Understanding how to link to other sites is as important as any advertising you do.
The time and energy you put into developing links to your business can pay off for
weeks, months, even years to come!

**First Rule of Linking**

"Know Thy Self" or at least know what you want to accomplish on line, whether it's
selling products or services of your own or as an affiliate, distributing or disseminating
information on the Internet or even just having your own personal webpages.

Unfortunately what I see all of the time are people who end up jumping around from
one program, or provider or afiiliate program after the other without any focus on
what exactly they want to accomplish, other than make money online, etc.

Now, not later, is the time to look into exactly what you want your website focus to be.
Decide what primary category(s) your website will fit into and what secondary or
peripheral sites will compliment it. Once you've decided your focus you'll be well on
your way to using reciprocal linking strategies successfully.

**Second Rule of Linking**

"Know What Kind of Websites Will Compliment Yours".  There's been a lot written
about how to choose websites to link to. But I think the one thing that can often be
overlooked is the fact that people all around the world have diverse interests and
although they may be looking for specific information, etc on one day doesn't eliminate
them from clicking on a link to a website that is totally different from what they wanted
to look at yesterday. They may not be targeted to your website but their interest brought
them to you.

You would be surprised to find the information you may be searching for on a website
that compliments yours but does not directly compete with you. It happens all of the time.
This is where your list of primary and secondarycategories for your website will help you
decide who you want to contact to set a reciprocal link with.

**Third Rule of Linking"

"Know who is Linking to Your Website".  You can do this very easily by going online to
www.linkpopularity.com  It's FREE. There's no strings attached and it's quick and easy.
Usually it doesn't take more than 2-3 minutes to check your website links. You may find
that you have several links back to you that you didn't know about, some you like and
maybe one or two you don't. The next thing you might want to do to help you narrow your
focus is to view a comparison of your site's link popularity to your competitors and other
popular websites at http://64.232.113.195/publinkpop/.

**Enough With The Rules Already**

Before you go contacting webmasters, now would be a good time to set up your Main
Links page on your website. On this page you are going to describe how a webmaster
can add their link to your Links Pages. You can call this Favorite Links, Personal Links
or something similar.

Basically anything that lets visitors know you have a Quality links page available.

Your Main Links Page should have several categories for visitors to choose from.
Each category should link to a separate page on your site where the category links
can be viewed. Remember to set each link so that it opens in a new window when a
visitor clicks on it because you don't want them leaving your site altogether and forget
where they started out from.

On this page you'll invite your visitors to apply for the privelege of linking to you. Why
should they have to apply? Because you want to screen their website to be sure it
doesn't directly compete with yours and that it also compliments yours in some way.
You can see my links page at http://www.cashway.com/main_links.htm .

You also want to indicate to your visitors that a reciprocal link back from their website
is a requirement for obtaining a link on this page. Those who are serious about reciprocal
linking will understand and place a link on their page.

If you want a free automated links page you can download and set up this simple cgi script
that will send an email confirming the link posted to whoever posted the link and giving them
your link information to post on their web site. This is a good script to start out with if you don't have time to screen links.

You can download it here http://www.cashway.com/z/affa.zip  

Why not just use a FFA website and link to 1,000's or millions of webpages?

FFA pages play a small role in your advertising but they shouldn't be included in a
reciprocal linking strategy because people rarely see the FFA sites or their messages
and the Search Engines don't recognize them in their criteria for determining link
popularity. It's best to stay away from them as a way to develop reciprocal links for your
website. 

**Contacting Webmasters**

Again the best webmasters to contact are the ones whose websites compliment yours
in some way. How do you find the sites and contact the webmasters? 

The simplest way is to go to one of the major search engines, enter in the terms that
describes websites you want to link to and let the search engine bring up the lists for you.
You can get several hundred email address just by visiting these sites and contacting the
webmaster.

It is always best to send a short email to the webmaster introducing yourself and stating
the reason you're contacting them. You may want to give the information for them to add
your link to their Link Page or simply start a dialog to see if there is a mutual interest in
linking.

For best results I like to find websites that compliment mine, then add them to an
appropriate link page and then send the website owner a personal email telling them I
liked their site, have added it to my Quality Links page and ask if they would link back to
my website. I also like to explain to them of some of the benefits of Reciprocal Linking
and even go as far as helping them set up their own page if they don't have a good
quality links page. Some willlink back to you and some won't. If they don't simply delete
the link and move on to the next site.

Implementing a reciprocal linking strategy does take time and effort, but it is easily
manageable. Combined with an overall web promotion strategy it can be a powerful
way for you to develop relevant, targeted traffic to your web pages as well as help to
increase your websites overall position in the search engines.