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Link Exchange Strategy
by Sage Lewis
http://www.sagerock.com
Most of our newsletter topics focus on web page promotion
via search engines. But this week I wanted to take a look at
link exchanging. Typically, when I tell a client what to expect,
I advise them to expect 30% to 50% of their traffic from search
engines. The rest of the traffic should come from exchanging
links with related sites. Below are seven tips for planning a
solid link exchange strategy for web page promotion.
1. Plan for the long term. Link exchanges will give you great
results if you continually work for them. There is no, I repeat,
NO proven quick fix for getting quality links to your site. While
there are programs that can help you with the process, nothing
beats going to a site you are interested in, look over the site
and then write a personal email asking to exchange links. Recommend
to them where you would like to be placed on their site. They
might not put you there but at least this will let them know
that you were at their site.
2. Track your exchanges in a spreadsheet or database. Develop
a system of keeping track of where you have requested a link
and when and if it was placed. Keeping track of link exchanges
can get confusing after a while. Having a tracking system in
place will help you tremendously.
3. Start looking for places to exchange links on the big search
engines. Yahoo, LookSmart and Google are great places to start
looking for sites. Begin by doing searches on your own site's
prime key phrases. Find sites that are related to your industry
yet are non-competing. A shoelace site would be a good exchange
with a shoe distributor, for example. If a site is ranking well
for your key phrases on these major engines, having a link here
is going to increase the value of your site in the eyes of all
the other engines. This will also lead to a nice amount of traffic.
4. Consider programs to help you with this web page promotion
process. Two programs that can save you some time are Zeus at
http://www.cyber-robotics.com and 2bpop at http://www.2bpop.com
These programs help you search for and organize related sites
and then enable you to contact them for link exchanges. These
tools can be big time savers. But don't fall into the trap of
creating hundreds of boilerplate emails that say nothing of interest
to the prospective site owner. Always create individualized emails.
5. If you want to really increase your chances of a link exchange
call the person in charge of the site. Emails can be a bit superfluous
especially from a stranger. But a phone call can often give your
request a bit more weight.
6. Make your links page easy to access from the rest of your
site. If your links page is hard to find or not linked from the
rest of your site it will decrease your chances of persuading
someone to want to exchange links. Make your links page attractive,
organized and a valuable resource for your visitors. There is
concern about providing links to other sites because this encourages
people to leave your site. The value you will receive from exchanged
traffic and becoming a centralized resource for your industry
far outweighs the loss of visitors.
If your site is setup correctly, the visitor will have accomplished
your most wanted response before they ever go to your links page.
Many times this response will have been to give you their email
address. You will have them in your marketing cycle for the long
term. If they didn't give you their email address chances are
you weren't what they were looking for anyway.
7. The big secret to link exchanging... join an affiliate program
and pay people to send you traffic. You can set up a program
that will give a site owner a certain amount of money (usually
between $.05-$.10 per click) for every visitor they send your
way. Using a program like this in conjunction with the above
steps is going to really help your exposure.
There are many companies that offer these services. Some are
managed by you and some are managed by the company. Choosing
the right service depends on many variables. Some such services
are:
clicXchange: http://clickxchange.com/
AssocTRAC: http://www.marketingtips.com/assoctrac.html
Commission Junction: http://www.cj.com/
The longer I'm in this business the more I believe that web page
promotion success is 80% planning and 20% implementation. Get
a plan and you are further ahead of the game than virtually everyone
else. This applies to link exchanging. Have a plan of attack,
set up your system and then just act it out. You won't be sorry
you did.
Article by Sage Lewis, founder and president of the web site
promotion firm SageRock.com. He has been employed as an Internet
Strategist and design/promotion consultant for 5 years. To subscribe
to SageRock's marketing newsletter, send a blank message to
sagerock-subscribe
@egroups.com or visit the company's site at www.sagerock.com.
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