Reciprocal linking

What reciprocal links are

Links are words or phrases on websites that link to other sites on the Internet. Many Internet surfers find websites through linking. So they would be on a website, then see an ad or link to another site, and then click on it.

Reciprocal linking involves finding websites that would compliment your own, and then offering to trade links, or ads, with them. So you would place their link on your website, and then you would have them place your link on their website.

The importance of reciprocal linking

The reason that you would want to place reciprocal links is because many Internet surfers find websites through linking, so it is a great way to increase traffic to a site. The number one way people find sites for the first time is through the search engines. The number two way is through links, or ads, from other websites. Therefore, the more places that you have linking in to you, the easier people can find your website.

Another reason that linking is important is because of a principle called “link popularity.” Many of the major search engines are starting to rank websites higher if they have many other websites linking in to them. The search engines have termed this link popularity.
Basically, search engines figure that if many other websites are linking, or advertising, to your site, then your site must be a good one. Therefore, the more companies that you get to link to you, the higher the search engines will rank you.

Some good articles on link popularity are at: http://www.searchengines.com/linkpopularity.html and http://www.searchengines.com/linkpopularityinc.html.

Steps to placing reciprocal links

In order to properly apply this marketing strategy, there are five main steps to go through:
Make sure you’ve got a links page on your website
Find complementary websites to exchange links with
Call/email the companies to offer to exchange links
Exchange links with those that are interested
Check back monthly to make sure your link is still there

1. Make sure you’ve got a links page on your website
Before you can place reciprocal links, you must have a place to put those links. Therefore, you will want to have a page on your website called links, or favorite links, or related links.

On this page you will want to have a couple paragraphs that explain the importance of trading links, and then the links underneath that listed by category. In talking about the importance of trading links, you can use the information from this document to help as we just went over that above. A good example of this is found at www.mybusinesskit.com. Go there and click on Related links, and you’ll see the type of information that you’d want to include.

The reason that you would want to include the importance of trading links on this page is because many other business owners will also come to your site wanting to advertise with you. Therefore, as they come and check out your links page, it will help sell them on the idea to trade links, so they will contact you to offer to trade links.

2. Find complementary websites to exchange links with
Once you’ve got your links page in place, you will want to find as many companies as possible to exchange links with. A complementary company is one that offers products/services that go hand-in-hand with your own product/services. These would not be direct competitors. By doing this, you are basically learning where your target audience hangs out online.

The best way to find these complementary companies is to use the search engines and type in words that would describe these companies and then check out the websites. As you find them, then keep a database somewhere of their website addresses, contact names, phone numbers, and email addresses. Many of the marketing strategies that you will be applying will be to work with these types of complementary companies, so the more you can find the better.

A great way to find out contact names and phone numbers of websites is to use the whois lookup function on places that you can register a domain name, like www.networksolutions.com. You can go there and click on whois lookup and type in a website address. Then this will pull up the name and contact information for who registered the domain name for that website.

3. Call/email the companies to offer to exchange links
Once you’ve found the companies to work with, you will then want to call or email the companies’ and offer to exchange links with them. In contacting them, calling will give you a much better success rate; however, through email, you can contact more companies in less time, so either way works.

In contacting these companies, explain that you have a website and that you are interested in advertising with them. Then you’d want to include four main points in talking to or emailing them:
Compliment their website. Tell them what you like about it. Give them specific details.
Explain your site. Explain how your site would complement, or go hand-in-hand with theirs.
Explain the importance of exchanging links. Emphasize how linking will help them bring more traffic to their site as well as get a higher search engine ranking.
Offer to exchange links. You can even give them the information to exchange links with you here so that they can just copy and paste it to their site.

This is a marketing strategy that you will continuously be applying to your website. It’s a free strategy, and very effective, so you’ll want to find as many companies as possible to exchange links with.

If you are emailing out this information instead of calling, make sure that the subject box of the email is very specific to their company. For example, you could have as the subject: Questions about MyFinancialSoftware.com (or whatever website it is). This would be much more likely to be opened because many people just go through and delete the emails that they get that look like advertisements.

4. Exchange links with those that are interested
As you find companies that are interested in exchanging links, you will want to give them your linking information, and then get their linking info. In exchanging links, you will need the following info:
Name of the website
Brief description of the site
URL address to link to

Give the company your information, and get theirs, and then add the link to your site. In talking to the company about adding your link to their site, ask them to put your link on an exit page (a page that a visitor would leave from). The homepage is the most popular exit page, so ask them to include the link at the bottom of the homepage if possible. If they have a links page, they will probably want to put it there, and that would be fine as well.

5. Check back monthly to make sure your link is still there
Make sure the company keeps your link on their site as long as you have theirs on your site. Check back to the site on a monthly basis to make sure you're both linked. And if you find that your link isn't there anymore, then contact them about it, or take their link off your site.



Online websites and resources

There are some great tools and online resources to utilize in helping you exchange links. Some of them are listed below:
www.links4trade.com is an online resource of companies wanting to exchange links. So you can register here, and then find other small business owners to trade links with.
www.cyber-robotics.com is also an online resource of companies wanting to exchange links. Go there and check out their Zeus program to read more about it.
www.linkpopularity.com will help you tell how many links are pointing to your website.