Benefits of Reciprocal Links
This method of traffic building is very important and best
of all it is free. All you need to do is contact the right
webmasters to obtain the right links. What is the right webmaster
or right link? Answer: A site with content that has a similar
theme to your web site content.
There are 2 primary benefits to a reciprocal linking program:
1) Drive Targeted Visitors to Your Site
The visitors that come from related websites are highly targeted
and you have a much better chance of selling them products
or services. After all, they have come to your site through
a link on a related website. Therefore, you know they are
interested in your sites theme; otherwise they wouldn't be
on a site that is linking to you. Finally, they wouldn't click
through to your site if they weren't interested.
2) Develop Better Search Engine Rankings
A practice started by Google, search engines evaluate the
number of links to a site as an important factor in establishing
a sites relevancy. Basically, search engines view sites with
many inbound links as being more relevant that similar sites
with lesser incoming links. The higher the "relevancy
score" the higher the ranking in a search engine. Beware,
relevancy is not just a numbers game. It is important to have
inbound links coming from sites that have content similar
to your product, service or information on your web site.
How Many Links do you need?
Contrary to what some SEO experts may say, you do not need
100's or 1000's of reciprocal links if you are a small business
owner with a local market & or a unique product. Basically,
50-100 reciprocal links will do nicely.
About Markets, Keywords, Page Content & Search Engine
Position
If you sell an item in a highly competitive market then you
should not expect to come up on the 1st page of google for
a single key word .... like "books". To do that
you will need say .... 200K or so reciprocal links to the
individual product page to go head to head with Amazon or
Borders.
Good News !! .... You can level the playing field (the inherent
beauty of the internet) by targeting your message to a level
that the big boys can't & you can garner some pretty impressive
results.
2 Tips to Level the Playing Field
• Put 2-4 word key phrases (that your customers are
likely to use) in your page content & appropriate meta
tags that define your product or market. So for books you
could put "used books massachusetts" or "buy
books online".
• Get links back to your site from directories that
already come up high in the search engines. This could be
product directories, regional directories, association directories.
When you are completing step 1 below you will come across
them.
How to Start a Reciprocal Link Program
Link building takes time. Do not be overwhelmed - set a manageable
goal. It takes time but if you set a goal of 5 links per week
for 10 weeks you will build a nice portfolio of reciprocal
links that will help you get found in search engines.
2 Tips to Start a Reciprocal Link Program
• How do you identify possible linking sources? Answer:
Use the search engines. Put in the key words someone would
use to find your site in google, msn & yahoo - see what
comes up. Visit the websites on the 1st 2 pages. Contact the
webmaster to trade links. And, see who they link to. Go to
those sites & contact those webmasters to trade links.
• Automate the process. Let others do the work. Put
a form on your website that drives the process - see
the example on my site |
