Reciprocal Linking
You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Such is essence of reciprocal linking. It is quite possibly the single most effective FREE source of new, targeted traffic to your site.
Reciprocal linking is where two webmasters (publishers of two different websites) agree to each place a link to the other’s site on their own site. This way, your visitors can learn of the existence of your exchange partner’s site and (hopefully) click through to it and – most importantly for you – vice versa.
Benefits of Reciprocal Linking
Value: At first glance, it may seem like reciprocal linking results in you driving traffic away from your own site, but the actual results are quite the opposite. By linking to other relevant sites, you increase the value of your site to your visitors and thus the likelihood that your visitors will come back for more great information and even, possibly, bookmark your site – a major goal of webmasters everywhere.
Traffic: Further, by consenting to promote another’s site on your own, you open yourself up to all the traffic that site generates, free of any annoying, budget-consuming costs-per-click. In essence, your site benefits from all the promotional efforts of another webmaster.
Search Engine Ranking: Reciprocal linking is also one way to improve your organic link popularity and your Google PageRank. Granted, simply having the largest possible number of reciprocal links does not assure high PageRanking or high link popularity. The key here is not quantity of links but quality. And what determines quality in reciprocal linking?
Relevance. You want to link with only those sites that have something to do with the product or service you’re offering. You want to appeal to an audience of web surfers that already has an interest in what you’re offering and, moreover, you want to provide those visitors with access to as many other sites relevant to their areas of interest and to the content on your site as possible.
Therefore, beware of products that generate free for all (FFA) link farms impartial to relevance, because those will only harm you in the end. Likewise, stay away from products that allow you to spam potential link partners as you’re likely to generate more enemies than friends that way.
Reciprocal Linking Software Products
Reciprocal link exchanging, being completely free, is obviously one of the most popular methods of promoting one’s website and, as such, has evolved into a complicated and competitive strategy that, if you’re not careful, could wind up consuming endless hours of your time.
In an effort to reduce all that human effort, many developers of web promotion software have created programs to facilitate and even automate the process of obtaining and maintaining reciprocal link exchanges with other sites. Many of the best reciprocal linking software packages are reviewed here in our website. Before you begin perusing those reviews, keep reading below to learn what features to look for. Most of the products and services reviewed herein offer variations on the same basic set of tools.
Find Potential Link Partners: A decent reciprocal linking program should help you find new potential partners to link with. Usually, this is achieved by entering in a keyword(s) or phrase(s) (and sometimes other variables as well) and having the program generate a list of websites that identify with the same keyword(s) or phrase(s).
Some products will generate a list of every site they can find that fit your specified criteria. Others draw from a database of sites already known to be open to link exchanges.
Some of the better products will even generate lists of sites that link to your competitors (or that your competitors link to), allowing you to reach out and create link exchanges with them as well. What better way – ethically and legally, that is – to boost your own traffic and simultaneously detract from your competitions’ traffic?
Contact Potential Link Partners: Once you have such a list in front of, your reciprocal linking software should then assist you in contacting the webmaster of those sites with an invitation or request to exchange links.
Usually, a product will include a variety of email templates for you to choose from, ideally with some degree of customizability. A reciprocal linking software product should make sending out these emails as simple as possible. Some even automate the process.
Likewise, it should be equally simple for the webmasters of other sites to contact you with an invitation/submission/request. The software you choose should facilitate receiving such inquiries as well. Make it as easy as possible for a potential partner to submit link requests and you’ll attract more potential partners.
Some products sort incoming queries for you by relevance or actions taken, by whether a submitted link is new or pending. Some allow you to automatically accept all incoming submissions, or all submissions that meet certain criteria (ie minimum PageRank or mandatory category). Of course, most products will let you manually review each submission yourself and personally approve or refuse it.
Note that many webmasters (maybe even including you) will only accept links from sites that already reciprocate. It therefore helps to have a feature in your chosen software for checking on the reciprocity of partner links. A product that lets you schedule automatic checks to ensure that your link continues to be posted where your partners say it will be and that it appears exactly as you want it to appear is even more useful. Most products with this type of feature will give you the option of temporarily suspending that partner’s link and/or sending an automated but semi-personalized email requesting that the link be reposted.
Create Links Directories: Once you’ve generated a list of partners with whom you’ve agreed to exchange links, you’ll need to create the web page or pages that will appear on your site containing all these links – usually referred to as a “Directory”. If you’re going to pay good money for a reciprocal link exchange program, it should at least help you design and maintain these links pages as well.
The more you can custom tailor your directory pages to match the look and feel of your site, the better. Many products come with alterable templates that allow you to upload your own headers, footers, tags, images, etc for (note this phrase because you’ll see it everywhere) “seamless integration” with the rest of your site.
The best directory generators let you sort and/or arrange your links any way you see fit. For example, you may want to list your links alphabetically for easy visitor perusing, or you may wish to display partner links in the order that you created the partnerships – thus honoring your oldest relationships with top placement. You may want a vertically-themed listing. You may want separate links pages for each of your designated categories.
Some products will even allow you to create “Featured Links” at the top of your pages that stand out from all the others, adding extra incentive to those partners you’re desperate to land. You can even monetize your directory page by charging partners for those esteemed positions.
In Summary
Reciprocal linking is absolutely one of the cheapest (even considering the cost of a software product) and easiest ways to generate targeted traffic and to create lasting and fruitful relationships with both your visitors and partners.
Products that reduce the amount of tedious, repetitive tasks you must manually perform are the most economical in the long run. You shouldn’t have to enter in new code and re-upload a revised webpage each time you add a new link to your directory, for example. Nor should you have to watch all your link partners like a hawk to make sure they live up to their end of the bargain or that their links are still active (nobody likes clicking on a dead link – no one). So, find a reciprocal linking program that’ll do all that for you.
And watch the traffic roll in!
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