Link Partners

A strong set on in bound links is vital to get you ranking high in the search engines. You also receive a small amount of traffic from the links themselves. To maximize your traffic, you want as many people linking to your site as possible. Trading links (having link partners) is a good way of achieving this. You give them a link on your site, and they give you a link back in return. Although you need to be careful. You shouldn't trade links with just anybody. You should trade links with sites in similar area's to you. For this site we would try and trade links with marketing related web sites. The search engines are reading more and more relevance into the content of the sites that are linking to you. Making sure your link comes with some accompanying text that relates to your site including your targeted keywords is the minimum. Having a link from a site that doesn't have anything at all to do with your site could potentially do more damage than good.

Step 1. Create your Link Partners page

First step is to create a link partners page. You need to do this as early as possible. People will be interested in the PR of you link partner page. If the page is brand new it will be PR 0 or N/A. Not many people will be interested in a PR 0 page. If you create your link partner page before submitting to the web directories then you should soon have some reasonable PR for this page. Make sure your link partner page is linked well off your home page. Take a look at our link partners page for ideas on what you should include in your page. Include requirements for link partners, a contact link and HTML code for them to add to their link partner page. If your links page is PR 3 then its fair to ask link requests to be at least PR 3.

Step 2. Create a free for all links page

Some sites won't be able to meet your minimum PR requirements for a link trade. You shouldn't ignore these sites completely as they may get good PR in the future. Instead give them a free for all links page that requires a reciprocal link. Download Cosmic Link Trade a free cgi script from CosmicScripts.com. This will make your free for all links page full automated. Follow the instructions contained in the zip to setup your automated link trade. Do not link this page off your homepage. Instead add a link for it at the bottom of your proper Link Partners page. This will give it a lower PR. You can see our free for all link trade page for an example. Although we recommend that you set at least PR1. This will prevent you swapping links with sites that have been banned from google for whatever reason. A link with such a site would be detrimental.

Step 3. Hit the link trade forums

There are several link trade forums, usually as a part of SEO discussions. There you can post your request for a link exchange. The link exchange forums we've found are:-

Step 4. Search for link partners

Use search engines to search for link partners. If you're looking for search partners, then others like you will be as well. Search using your top keyword plus 'link partner' to make 'KEYWORD link partner'. Look down through the results and you should find quite a few link partners pages form other sites. Get in touch and exchange links. Now try searches like 'KEYWORD links page', 'KEYWORD link trade' and 'KEYWORD link exchange'. That should bring up more link partner pages. Now try another keyword and repeat the process. There are the best people to swap links with as they are already ready and waiting to swap links. Once you've found all the link partners pages you can it's time to contact sites that you think would make good link partners. You need to take caution when contacting people for a link trade, make sure each email is individual, do not bulk email. If you can use a contact form from their site. This shows that you were on their site and didn't just buy an email list. Be polite. Don't bother contacting them if there site isn't of similar content. Also stick to sites with a similar PR. 100 links from PR 1 sites isn't worth the same as just one PR 3. The golden goal is to get exchanges with sites that have higher PR's. If you bag a couple of PR 7 or 8's your laughing. If you get in contact with a PR 6, 7 or 8 that seems interested but a bit unsure then pick up the phone and give them a call. That link could really make a huge difference to your sites PR and ranking, so go that extra mile.

Don't forget you can also do reverse search lookups to see who has done link exchanges with your competitors. In Google, type 'link:URLofcompetitor.com'.

Step 5. Link trade sites

There are several link trade sites out there designed to bring link partners together. Go and get yourself registered and add your site to their directories. You should be able to find some good link partners in your area, and help others find you.

Step 6. Three way or Round table linking

In the eyes of a search engine inbound only links are best. With a standard link trade your inbound link has a link going straight back, with round table linking you only have an in bound link. You need at least 3 sites to participate, site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links to site A. Voila Each site gets a good inbound only link. CosmicScripts.com is likely to develop a script to automate the selection process in the not so distant future.