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Reciprocal Links
How to get reciprocal links
By Allan Gardyne |
Published 12/20/2005 associate programs .com
Reciprocal links happen when two web sites agree to link to
each other. Reciprocal links can also known as "link swaps", "link
exchanges" and "link partners". A common misspelling is "reciprical
links".
Reciprocal links can help you in two ways:
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They increase your web site
traffic, from people who click on the links.
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Reciprocal links also play a major
role in boosting your rankings in search engines.
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Warning: Late in 2005, Google's
Matt Cutts made it clear that it's possible to "overdo" reciprocal
links. Getting good, solid, reciprocal links should be part of your
links strategy, not your total marketing strategy.
When ranking sites, the major search engines take into account the
number and quality of the sites that link to you.
Persuading good quality, relevant sites to link to you can be
tedious, time-consuming and frustrating. Here are some tips to
increase your chances of success.
One way to find link partners is to do searches in major search
engines such as Google and Yahoo! to find sites which complement
yours but are not direct competitors.
Many sites also link to direct competitors, figuring that the
benefits outweigh any disadvantages. |
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Examine their links pages
A refinement of this strategy is to visit your competitors' sites
and complementary sites and examine their links pages or resources
pages. The sites you'll find there are potential reciprocal links
partners. They should be linking to you. Now visit THEIR links pages
and examine them, and so on down the chain. You should end up with a
long list of good sites with which to exchange links.
How to set up reciprocal links
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Find GOOD QUALITY, complementary
sites.
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Place a link to them on your site.
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Only AFTER you've placed a link to
them, email the owner of the site a short, friendly note.
Address him or her by name. (If the name isn't on the site, you
may be able to find it at DomainTools.com.)
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Genuinely praise something on the
site. If you can't find something worth praising, delete the
site from your list.
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Tell the web site owner you've
linked to their site, giving them the URL of the page where
you've place your link.
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Ask for a link back to your site,
suggesting a page where the link would be appropriate.
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Three weeks later, if there's been
no reply, send a brief, polite reminder. It's easy for emails to
be lost or overlooked.
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Use the phone and/or snail mail. A
link from a good site is a very valuable thing. If you can't get
noticed by email, consider trying a phone call or posting a
letter. They're more expensive but also more likely to attract
the answer you want.
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Keep an alphabetical record of
sites you've linked to and requested links from. You need to
know who you've contacted and who you haven't.
Want links from pages with high
PageRank?
To boost their PageRank, some webmasters concentrate on getting
links only from sites that have high PageRank. (If we all did this,
no new site would ever get reciprocal links.)
If you want to try this approach, SEChat's PageRank Search is a
useful free search tool to use. It gives you Google search results
PLUS their PageRank. You type in a key phrase and can quickly see
the PageRank of pages optimized for that phrase.
Really serious ways of getting links
You can arrange newsletter article exchanges with other newsletter
publishers in your niche, preferably with newsletters which are
archived online.
Some webmasters also arrange "article swaps". You write an article
to be published on their website and they write an article for your
site. This gives you an in-context link, which is much more
effective than a mere link on a links page.
Reciprocal links websites
You can search in Google for link exchange websites which publish
directories of website owners who actively exchange links with each
other. As a general rule, the easier and more automated link
exchanging is, the more risky it is that you'll be doing something
which the search engines don't like. For example, you don't want to
get involved in link farms which link to totally unrelated websites.
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