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Articles Index >> Marketing
Confessions of a Link Building Expert
by Michael Cheney
I’ve been online marketing and building websites for over 10 years. One
of the most important things I’ve learned during that time is that exchanging
links with people is one of, if not the best, way to get traffic to a website.
Thinking about it logically, the Internet is just a collection of interconnected
websites. If you’re a webmaster and you own a website that you’re
looking to get business from, you need to exchange links.
Many people have started to say that link building, or link exchanging, is
dead. Reciprocal links are not dead; they are very much alive. In recent times,
search engines have started to clamp down on people who are exchanging links
with irrelevant websites. This is the key, you shouldn’t exchange links
with just any old websites. You need to exchange links with sites that are in
your particular theme or area of interest.
Once you start to do this you develop a larger internet footprint. This means
your site is mentioned all over the Internet in lots of places where your target
audience is going to visit. So how do you go about it?
The first step is to actually add links to your website. But before you can
even do that, you need to sit down and consider which websites online your target
audience is going to visit. You need to think about what else your customers
will be doing online.
Which other websites will they be visiting before they come to yours? Which
other products will your customers also be interested in buying? Which services
do your customers use after they’ve bought from you? Thinking in this
way enables you to develop an online map of where your customers will visit.
Once you’ve done this you can then start to pinpoint exact websites that
you would like to exchange links with. When you’re doing this, you need
to focus on quality and relevance. Make sure the websites you are selecting
are of a high quality and that they are very relevant to your target audience.
You should also try and pick sites that have a good search engine ranking themselves.
Once you have done this, develop a list of potential links in your spreadsheet
and then actually create the links on your website. Try not to have more than
50 links on a single page, as some search engines look down upon this.
If you have hundreds of links, you might want to think about multiple pages
or even creating a links directory with different themed categories.
Once you’ve added all the links to your website, you then need to go
off and contact each of the webmasters. Don’t write a long massive email,
just keep it short and to the point. Include the link where they can click and
see how you’ve linked to them. Also tell them that you are willing to
change the details of the link if they require. Be sure to give them the text
and linking details that you would like them to use on their site.
The Law of Averages shows that you won’t get responses from everybody,
but a percentage will reply and link back to you. And that’s how you get
started with reciprocal linking.
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