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Section:: Web Articles < Archives > |
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Missing Links: Inbound Link Strategies A good deal of the material available on site promotion deals with submitting your site to Yahoo! and various search engines. For some webmasters, the all-consuming goal becomes achieving and maintaining a top 10 or top 20 listing. While a high listing in one of the major engines would be great, not everyone is going to be able to accomplish that. After all, only...well....10 sites out of the hundreds of thousands out there will be in the top 10, right? Should you hang it all up if you don't make it into that elite group? No way! You should always submit your site to the major search engines and do what you can within reason to try to ensure a good listing. But don't put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. There are other ways to promote your site and these other methods might just work as well as, or in some cases better than, search engines and directories to refer people to your site. The promotion method I want to discuss in this article is linking. There are basically two types of links: reciprocal and non-reciprocal. Reciprocal links are agreements between site owners to display each other's hypertext links. This is the online equivalent of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". Non-reciprocal links, then, are links to your site that another site owner has placed on his or her page without requiring you to do the same. These types of links are what I strive for as a site owner. The reason is simple: it's free advertising; you don't have to do a thing except reap the benefits of any additional traffic. I'm going to outline a few ways to cultivate each kind of link and some DOs and DON'Ts in each category. Reciprocal Links One of my visitors emailed me just today asking what he could do to get more site owners to trade links. As a site owner myself, I've been approached by many people and I've discovered quite a few things that discourage me from swapping links with other sites. Based on my experience, I want to offer a few pointers for those of you who are trying to get a reciprocal link program off the ground. Quick JumpPage 1 - IntroductionPage 2 - Show me the pointers!Page 3 - What's number 4? Show me the pointers! I. Personalize your contact email I can't tell you how many sites I've *never* even considered exchanging links with simply because I received a "form letter" from the owner. You've received these, haven't you? Something along the lines of: "Hello fellow webmaster! I visited your site today..." By the second line, it becomes painfully obvious he or she did nothing of the sort. If you don't care enough to find out my name and send me a personal email, why should I care to link with you? My name is on the front page (and every other page) of my site! How hard is it to address the email to me and not some generic group? II. Target You've sent out email to various site owners and you've gotten a bite! The owner of the "Greater Hemhaw Bat Roosting Habitat Study Page" wants to trade links! Slow down, kid, let's think about this for a moment. If your site is devoted to constructing a bat house (yes, there is such a thing, Virginia), you're in business. If your site caters to software developers, do you really want to include that link on your page? Am I being a bit facetious? Maybe so. The point I'm trying to convey is you should only negotiate reciprocal links with sites that have content which complements yours. The reason for this this is twofold: First, it is a great resource for your visitors to be able to find information that you may not have covered on your page. Afraid you'll lose them forever? If your content isn't good enough to get them to return, you never really *had* them in the first place. The second reason is you won't be filling up your space with loads of (for your visitors' purposes) useless material. Don't you think sites that are just haphazard collections of links already take up too much space? continue... All articles published on EthanCote.com are copyrighted by their respective author. They are not to be taken without the consent of the author. |
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