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Reciprocal Linking
by Maurice Bandcroft
http://123sitepromotion.com
Link trading or reciprocal linking, is a powerful and
inexpensive web promotion strategy used to increase
qualified traffic and improve link popularity. Reciprocal
or link trading is simply the exchange of text, button or
banners with other similar web sites that mutually agree to
display an active link (usually pointing to the front or
splash page).
How many companies link directly to your site? How many
other places on the world wide web point potential web
surfers to your main page? Why would you want to do it? Are
you registered with all the search engines?
There are several companies such as LinkLeads.com where you
can select sites to exchange reciprocal links from a
targeted search engine, and receive the linking information
for those sites instantly in your email. Membership could
improve your visitor traffic and search engine ranking.
Also, by referring potential members, you can generate
additional reciprocal links to your website.
The advantages include exchanging reciprocal links with:
*Sites that are similar to your own
*Sites that match your audience profile
*Sites that are lifestyle-oriented, or non-competitive
*And, sites that want to build traffic, just like you......
For a nominal monthly fee your reciprocal links directory
can be administered by a third party such as
LinksManager.com or Links4Trade.com that maintains your
current links. Their service performs automatic maintenance
on all hosted link trade pages. You never have to worry
about checking your page for dead links, link accuracy,
policing partners to make sure that they have linked to
you, or that they are still linking to you.
LinksManager.com also currently offers a 30 day trial
period and financial incentives for each referral.
The quality of reciprocal links that link with your web
site determine your standings in the major search engines.
There are several free link popularity checks such as
LinkPopularity.com, Marketleap.com, LinksToYou.com and
LinkPopularityCheck.com that give you instant free access
to the number of links you have with the major search
engines. These free directories can also be used to
determine the level of your direct and indirect
competition, and show you where additional links could be
generated from.
If you don't think link popularity means anything, a quick
look at these sites show that Amazon has more than 50
million web sites that point directly toward their main
page. Thats one reason why Amazon is able to achieve top
rankings in almost everything it does.
So what are the advantages of increasing the number of
links to your Web site?
1. The more sites that link to you, the more traffic you
can expect to receive to your site. People find nearly as
many Web sites by following links from one Web site to
another as they do by using the search engines. Some well-
placed links to your Web site can be great long-term
traffic generators.
2. More and more major search engines will rank your pages
higher when you have many links to your Web site (i.e.,
your link popularity). Higher search rankings translate
into greater traffic.
3. The more links to your site, the more ways search engine
spiders have for finding you each week. Therefore, you tend
to stay indexed longer and are less frequently dropped from
the index.
4. Other advantages include placing higher with various
search engines, and actually being listed with individual
search engines..... even if you haven't applied. For
example, if you have several hundred links that point to
your site from All the Web or AltaVista an application to
register with those sites will be speeded up as the company
already has a history with you.
The quality of sites that point toward you also count, and
other link popularity tips include:
1. The more links you have to your site, the better.
2. Some engines favor links from popular sites. Therefore,
a few links from Web sites with a high link popularity
score may be given greater importance than a larger number
of links from less popular sites.
3. Some engines boost rankings for a keyword when they find
links to a site that include the targeted keywords in the
linking text.
For additional reciprocal linking and search engine
positioning information, download a free copy of the ebook
Gorilla Website Marketing by Glenn Canady at
www.cuttsgroup.com/downloads/gorilla.zip. This publication
is full of proven and effective marketing ideas and
strategies for webmasters.
Maurice Bandcroft is a small business marketing and
promotion specialist. Subscribe to his free newsletter and
discover how to increase your monthly site traffic and
revenue utilizing free resources, reciprocal linking,
barter and other financial leverage alternatives. Discover
thinking out of the box revenue generating methods that any
webmaster can use.
This article courtesy of ...
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