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A "Link to Us" page can
provide an automated way of getting incoming links to your site. What we
are talking about here is in effect a reciprocal link exchange page. What is
reciprocal linking? A reciprocal link is essentially a bribe. It's perfectly
legal, morally correct, and in fact, it's how the Internet was meant to be
structured. A Reciprocal link is where two webmasters or web site owners
exchange links. Web Master A puts a link from their Site to Web Master B.
Web Master B puts a link from her site to Web Master A. It's a Link
"Exchange." In terms of how this shows your 'importance' to search engine
spiders and software, the more incoming links you have, obviously the more
important others perceive your website to be, therefore the search engines
will think the same. Its one way they have of determining that your site is
still live, still active and still of interest. That means, you will rank
more highly. With almost 25% of the worlds websites redundant at any one
time, this is one of many ways, search engines determine how important you
are to others on the web.
When a clever Web Master
finds your site and they see and that you are trading links with other
web masters, they are very likely to contact you immediately and request an
exchange. This means you are likely to see more requests for a link exchange
than you are likely to see people linking to your site because of your "Link
to Us" page. Most web masters will not even bother trying to exchange links
with a site than doesn't already have a quality links page. It's all about
the numbers. You can get more links faster if you have a quality link
exchange page.
There are some instances
where it's not appropriate for you to link off your site. If you're an
educational site, a non-profit site, a charity site - you are probably
mandated not to exchange links with commercial entities. But, if you can
quickly acquire incoming links by trading links with other web masters -by
all means do it.
Are there any down-sides
to Trading Links? Not really. But, it will take time. Meaning, every
time you get a Link Exchange Request, you need to actually publish the link
to the Web Master's site that your trading with to your Links Page. The
biggest problem is that you need to have a Link Exchange Page that benefits
the Web Masters exchanging links with you. Meaning - it has to have a decent
Google Page Rank. So, when you're starting your site, make sure that your
site structure includes a page for trading links.
You also want your links
page to inherit some of your site's Google Page Rank, so make sure that
you get that page crawled and indexed. In fact, your main links page should
have a link directly from the home page. Some Webmasters try to bury their
links pages inside their site. They think they're not "giving up" valuable
page rank that way, but what they're really giving up is valuable link
partners who won't trade links with them because they have buried their
links page..
Finally, as with your
"Link To Us" page, make sure that you are controlling how the other web
masters are linking to you. You can go so far as to provide the HTML
code of the link that you want them to use right on your Link Exchange Page.
Reciprocal linking is the basis for the web. Such linking creates the
structure of the Internet. Not only can it provide a powerful tool for
Search Engine Optimisation, it can also provide qualified traffic if the
sites that link to you have a genuine interest in your site's industry.
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