Outsource Reciprocal Links

Outsource Reciprocal links enable complementary Web pages to direct traffic to each other by trading a link for a link. Each business has the opportunity to advertise its site, usually for free, to a target audience. Exchange programs exist for hyperlinks and banner ads, but reciprocal hyperlinks are by far the more common.

¤ What's In It for You : Reciprocal linking offers two main benefits. Search engines often factor link popularity into their algorithms to give pages linked to other sites a higher ranking. And reciprocal links are excellent for targeting specific audiences. Let's say you've written a book about a particular breed of dog, the border collie. You can promote your book to its highly focused market through links on sites focusing solely on that breed, such as online dog clubs. Search engines don't offer this direct connection to your audience. The point of a reciprocal link campaign is to direct targeted traffic to your site. Find sites that cater to the same audience yours does, request links from them and track each request.

¤ Be Realistic : Keep in mind most high-traffic sites, such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com, won't participate in reciprocal linking. They have plenty of viewers and can't spare the time to screen potential linked sites. Moreover, you might be accused of spamming if you send these sites e-mail, particularly unsolicited messages requesting promotional favors. Start by conducting an online search. If your site sells pet supplies, you can type keywords such as pets, pet stores, cats and dogs into a search engine to get a list of potential linking partners. Yahoo! is an excellent tool because it returns similar pages by category, which helps narrow the field immediately.

Yahoo!'s WebRing is a good tool for targeting a market of similar sites if you want to join a Web ring, another strategy for building reciprocal links. When you've compiled a list of potential sites, start requesting link exchanges. It's likely you'll start out quickly identifying many high-quality linking partners only to spend several days, perhaps weeks, coordinating and negotiating deals with them.

¤ Outside Assists : You can ease the administrative burden by finding a good software program or reciprocal link service. Programs help you do the work more efficiently; services generally handle the work for you.

¤ Reciprocal link software programs : Link to Link, for example, is designed to simplify the process and save time in requesting and maintaining reciprocal links. The program has e-mail templates to help you compose requests to site owners. It allows you to automate this process by merging your request message with partner site URLs, contact names and other pertinent data — if you have entered these in a database. Beware of sending the same e-mail message to multiple recipients if they're high-traffic sites. You can find a list of other reciprocal link software programs online.

¤ Reciprocal link services : You can outsource the whole process to companies that specialize in reciprocal link building, such as Linkme.com. These link services, many of which are free, tout attractive benefits, such as link verification and customization.

Before you outsource, ask yourself two important questions ??

¤ How will you measure performance? If you conduct the campaign yourself, you can look at your server's referrer logs, which contain data on which sites have sent you traffic, average length of time visitors remain on your site, and so on.

You can obtain these logs from your Internet service provider (ISP). If you outsource your link campaign, you should ask how the service will track traffic sent to your site, and if it will share those data with you. How can you be assured the links being negotiated for you are top-quality and targeted at your audience? Are you willing to give the third-party service full authority to negotiate links on your behalf ?If you do outsource, one good approach is to set quality control standards — such as only partnering with sites that will agree to place your link a click or two from their home page, not several layers deep in their site.

¤ Take the Bull by the Horns : Finally, ask yourself: How will I measure performance? Maintain quality? Make sure inbound and outbound links are active? Be realistic about your resources and time constraints when deciding if automating or outsourcing all or a portion of the job is right for you. No one cares about your site as much as you do, and no third party will be as conscientious as you or your staff when it comes to the details.

Reciprocal links are a valuable tool for attracting traffic to your Web site. Grab the helm in building and negotiating them to target a focused audience.