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An
Overview of Link Exchanging
For
those of you not familiar with
the how's and why's of link exchanging, here's an
overview.
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What
is link trading or reciprocal linking?
Link
trading, sometimes called reciprocal linking is a
web promotion strategy used by webmasters and site
owners to increase qualified traffic to their
sites. Webmasters search the Internet
for other websites that have the same type of
visitors and contact those site owners by email
requesting a link trade. If a site owner
agrees to the trade, they then link to each other's
websites in order to share traffic.
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How
Search engines work:
Search
Engines Don't Actually Search the Web:
Most
search engines create a date base by examining only
the web sites submitted to them. They
search each submitted web site and add data to their
own computer files based on what they find on the
submitted sites. (Some search engines, such as
Google use a slightly different
approach) Technically, the process
is called spidering.
So
when you go to a web directory and type in a single word
such as "weddings" or a phrase
such as "Global Climate Change"
and then click "search," the search engines don't
actually go out onto the web looking for
anything. They merely search the
data base that they have collected from the
Internet.
So,
if you have not submitted your web site to that
search engine and your web site has not been
spidered, no resultant data is in their data
base. You can search all day and you'll
never be found.
You
can have the world's greatest web site, but
unless you have some connection to other web
sites or are listed in some search engine data
bases, your presence on the Internet is invisible.
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Some
(Not Very) Technical Stuff:
1)
Use
Words Not Pictures:
When you
actually do create your links, use an HTML
text link (say it in words) rather
that using a graphics link (images such as
your logo). Why?
Because the search engines simply do
not recognize text contained in
graphics. They read HTML
text, so if you want to be noticed, speak
in HTML language.
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2)
Special Links
Page: Because the
intention is to play win/win, we suggest
that you set
up a special links page and have a clear
link on your homepage directing viewers to
your links
page. Ask that
those with whom you exchange links to do
likewise.
For
most businesses on the web,
there is actually no shortage of
customers. The problem is
usually that too few potential
customers are viewing your web
site. So playing
win/win via reciprocal links can
be a big financial boost to
everyone involved.
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3) Invitation
Page: On your own
web site, create add an Invitation
to Links with Us, page
such as the page you are now viewing, and
invite others to exchange
links. Be sure
to add a link
on your home page to your link-invitation page.
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4)
Promote
Links:
Promote your
specific Reciprocal Links Page URL address
in all the major search engines.
Add Title, Description and Keywords
to your links page, then when the search
engines spider your web site, your
interest in exchanging links will be part
of the data in the search engine
files.
In
your browser (such as Microsoft Internet
Explorer) look in the View menu and
click on Source. This
will show you the html formatting for the
page you are viewing. At the
top
of the page, you can see the Title,
Description, and Keywords used by the
creator of that page. Use
these as examples of what you can also do.
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Priority
listings:
One of the factors that places a web site higher up
in some of the search engine lists is the number of
links it has from other web
sites. Every major search engine uses
link analysis as part of their
ranking
algorithms. So
setting up a reciprocal links page and linking with
other web sites will help you to get a better
listing position in the search engines.
The more relevant links you have, the
more traffic you have, so the more relevant links
the better.
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Appropriate
links:
Be
sure that the sites you link to are appropriate for
your website. Search engine link analysis is
not about getting lots of links from just
anywhere. It's about getting links
from good web pages that are related to the topics
for which you want to be found.
For
example linking a fishing-gear web site to a
knitting-circle web site would not be
appropriate. As another example, on our wedd101.com°
web
site, our links are related to Wedding
Services,
thus, we direct our
attention to a specific audience -- an
audience interested in weddings. Be particularly sensitive if you are dealing in
adults products.
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