A reciprocal link is an agreement between two websites, where both agree to link to each other thus boosting the page rank of each.
This works because when ranking sites, the major search engines take into account the number and quality of the sites that link to you.
Persuading good quality, relevant sites to link to you can be tedious, time-consuming and frustrating. Here are some tips to increase your chances of success.
1) Find link partners
One way to find link partners is to do searches in major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! to find sites which complement.
2) Examine their links pages
A refinement of this strategy is to visit your competitors' sites and complementary sites and examine their links pages or resources pages.
The sites you'll find there are potential reciprocal links partners. They should be linking to you.
3) Now visit THEIR links pages and examine them, and so on down the chain.
You should end up with a long list of good sites with which to exchange links.
How to set up reciprocal links
- Find GOOD QUALITY, complementary sites.
- Place a link to them on your site.
- Only AFTER you've placed a link to them, email the owner of the site a short, friendly note. Address him or her by name. (If the name isn't on the site, you may be able to find it at www.whois.sc)
- Genuinely praise something on the site. If you can't find something worth praising, delete the site from your list.
- Tell the web site owner you've linked to their site, giving them the URL of the page where you've place your link.
- Ask for a link back to your site, suggesting a page where the link would be appropriate.
- Three weeks later, if there's been no reply, send a brief, polite reminder. It's easy for emails to be lost or overlooked.
- Use the phone and/or snail mail. A link from a good site is a very valuable thing. If you can't get noticed by email, consider trying a phone call or posting a letter. They're more expensive but also more likely to attract the answer you want.
- Keep an alphabetical record of sites you've linked to and requested links from. You need to know who you've contacted and who you haven't.
If this seems like quite a lot of work, that's because it is. There is, however, no better way to boost your site to that all important Google front page.
