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Articles Index >> Marketing
How to Get Great Link Popularity Without
Linking To Anyone Else
by Michael Cheney
Lots of webmasters tell me that they like the idea of link popularity and reciprocal
linking, but they don’t like the idea of actually linking to other websites.
They tell me that they don’t want lots of links cluttering up their website
and that the volume of links required to be placed on their site would make
their site look a mess. They also don’t want people leaving their website
to go to other sites.
Some of them say they would just not link to anyone else outright. But does
not linking to other people actually stop you from getting link popularity?
In a word, yes.
It’s virtually impossible to get high link popularity on the Internet
unless you are willing to reciprocate. The only obvious exceptions are if you
have a massive global brand, like MSN, or a hugely popular website or presence
that people will link to regardless.
The Internet itself is just a collection of interlinked websites. If you want
lots of people to link to you but you’re not willing to link to them,
you’re missing the entire point of what the Internet is about.
It’s like a community all dependent on each other. If you’re a
member of a community and you never help the other members, when you face a
crisis and turn to all the other members for help, what do you think they will
say? This is exactly the same.
Link popularity can only come about as a result of strategic reciprocal linking.
You need to establish links with websites that are in a similar field to yours.
Make sure they are of a high quality and that they are well-ranked in search
engines themselves.
You should avoid linking with “bad neighborhoods” as these are
frowned upon by search engines. Websites and domains that use spam techniques,
for example, can be very bad to associate with, so do your research.
One of the best ways to find reciprocal links is simply to go to a search engine
and type in the phrase “add url” and then the name of your industry
sector. This will give you a list of websites that are open to you adding your
website to theirs.
When looking to build reciprocal links, remember that this is a laborious process.
It can take many, many hours to do. If done manually, it involves a lot of researching,
getting all the websites written down or in a spreadsheet, and then contacting
them one by one after you’ve established a link.
You then need to make sure they’re linking back to you and follow up
with them if they aren’t. You also need to remove the links that are non-reciprocating
and repeat the whole process again.
It can take hours and hours every single week to do this correctly, but there
is an easier and quicker way. It involves using a bit of software. I highly
recommend this tool. It’s called Arelis
and you can get
a free trial of it right here.
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