Unveil the Truth of Reciprocal Link Exchange

Many webmasterstreat their reciprocal link exchange
program as a means to increase link popularity and search
engine ranking only. Usually, they request link exchange,
and bury their link page in some nearly invisible places.
E.g. At the bottom of your homepage, and use a link called
¡§links¡¨ with font size =1.

I can say your link exchange program cannot gain you any
benefit by using the above method.

Actually, reciprocal link exchange should not be used to
manipulate search engine rankings as search engines can
detect it and punish you. Instead, you should regard it
as another alternative way to drive website traffic and
build business relationship. Webmasters may realize that
their traffic is too dependent on search engines; however,
their algorithm is not disclosing to public and changing
too fast. You just feel that it is too difficult to keep
abreast with the changes.

Therefore, you want to build more traffic generation
systems. In addition to email marketing, affiliate
marketing, reciprocal link exchange is another means.

Actually, you should manage your reciprocal link exchange
seriously. The main purpose is to drive website traffic.
As a by-product, it may increase the link popularity and
search engine ranking.

To run a good reciprocal link exchange, it takes some
effort. Link building does not happen over night. However,
it can drive you steadily increasing website traffic. They
are free and you don't need to pay for every click. So,
you can regard it as a low cost traffic generation system
that drive visitors to your site.

If 100 reciprocal links can drive you 10 unique visitors
per day, 500 reciprocal links can drive you 50 unique
visitors daily. It converts to 1,500 unique visitors
monthly or 18,000 extra unique visitors every year should
you implement reciprocal link building.

To you, it means thousands dollars. E.g. If you purchase
these traffic from pay per click search engines e.g.
Overture.com, you may pay, US$18,000 per year for 18,000
clicks. It is not uncommon that each click worths US$1. In
some highly competitive industry, each click in
Overture.com means US$4.5 or above.

Not to mention you can convert a certain percentage of
18,000 visitors you drive from reciprocal links to your
customers. So, it can mean you gain another thousand
dollars through building your reciprocal links.

To make sure your reciprocal links can drive quality
traffic, I share some suggestions here:

A. Decide Which Websites to Exchange Links With

1. Relevant Sites
If your site is targeting for some specific niche, not
every website out there that does link exchanges is right
for you. You want to exchange links with a website that
will bring targeted traffic (visitors/customers that are
interested in what you have to offer).
Exchanging links with websites that have similar or
complimentary themes or topics, should produce the best
targeted traffic.

2. Suitable Sites
You should choose websites that do not bury their link
pages to some ¡§invisible¡¨ place. They cannot help you
drive traffic.

B. Politely ask for link exchange can do you good

Once you find a website to exchange links, send the
webmaster a personal email and give them a reciprocal link
first. In the email, state your:

- name,
- your URL
- where their link is located on your website
- what you like about their site and
- why it would be mutually beneficial to exchange links

Try not to use "pre-made emails". Show the webmaster that
you actually visited their website and you know what you
are talking about. Sending blind, bulk emails out is not a
good idea.

C. Manage Link Exchange in Timely Fashion

If you request a link exchange with other webmasters, you
should firstly link their sites first. On the other hand,
if you accept a link exchange request, promptly put their
links on your sites. Otherwise, you may just regarded as a
link cheater, or not respect your link partners.

After you make the reciprocal link, email your link
partners it is done and point them to the respective URL.
In case you reject a link exchange request, you may send a
courtesy email to explain the reason. Through these email
communication, you may establish good business
relationship with your link partners and is beneficial to
establishing other business partnership.

D. Periodically Check If Your Link Partners Are Still
Linking to You

Granted, most of the link partners are honest guys but NOT
all. So, you'd better check it. Sometimes, people may just
mistakenly remove your links. Hence, if you find your link
partners took off your site, send them a courtesy email
and request them to re-link to your site.

E. Suggest Text for Linking to You Carefully

If someone is willing to link to you but use some
inappropriate text to describe your site, it may do you
more harm! It affects whether a visitor will click the
link and go to your site, affects your branding, and
affects how readers perceive your site!!
So, you may suggest the text to your link partners.

F. Organize Your Link Directory

To make your link directory as a useful resource to your
site visitors and attract more link exchange request from
other webmasters, organize your link into categorized
directory. You can build many categories but don¡¦t build
too many sub-categories. Visitors is less likely to visit
web pages in ¡§deeper¡¨ position, and¡§deeper¡¨ web pages
will get lower search engine ranking. To attract high
quality link partners, make your categorized directory
flat instead of a tall structure.

By: Jimsun Lui Devshed.com ^ TOP

Posted on 10:14:20 by chris -

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