How To Use Reciprocal Links To Promote Your Website

What are Reciprocal Links?

Reciprocal Links are basically the exchange of your link with someone else who has a website. The exchange could be with someone who has a site similar to yours or something totally different. The concept is simply you both agree to add a link for the other person's site on your site and in doing this, you each help to drive traffic to each other's site.

When using Reciprocal links, you are in fact using one of the more common and effective forms to promote your website. When you are able to trade links, both sites can benefit by the sharing of traffic and getting the search engines to notice you.

Reciprocal Links can definitely help to improve your search engine ranking and help bring more traffic to your web site. Both the quantity and quality of other links will have an effect on your link popularity.

When you increase your site's popularity, you will get more traffic to your web site and as more visitors find your web site, your search engine ranking can improve as well, bringing in more targeted traffic.

As your competition increases, it is very important that you get a good ranking in the search engines. To attain the high rank within the search engines, you need a plan, a plan that focuses on a linking strategy that will help you establish Reciprocal links with other web sites.

These are some guidelines that may help you:

1) Determine the types of sites that interest you and you would like to trade with. These sites should be somewhat similar to your website's category of interest or they can be sites that you feel your visitors may find interesting, just as you did.

2) It does not matter whether you are just starting out or looking for more links, your goal is to get results as fast as possible. You can try and exchange links with other popular and quality web sites. You must give it a try, the worst thing that can happen is they so no.

Sometimes a popular web site might be willing to trade links with you, even if their category is similar. Frequently you might even get requests from other sites and you can reject them for whatever reason. This is your decision. You can be picky too.

3) Keep this in mind. When you contact the site's webmaster, be kind and courteous. Tell him/her that your site has a similar topic, as you briefly describe your site. Let them know that you liked their site and say why and that you have included a link to it.

Make sure they know where on your site, the link can be found and provide your website address and the link page. Then it is appropriate for you to ask him/her to return the favor by linking to your site. If you get no response, simply delete the link you added for them and look for other sites.

4) Do not get discouraged. There are still many others that will be happy to exchange links.

5) Since there are millions and millions of web sites, you must be patient. It will take time and effort to find those sites you like and choose for your reciprocal links.

6) If another webmaster should request to exchange a link with you, reply to him/her. If you decide not to, tell them why. But in the event you do like their web site then, add a link. Every good site can prove to be useful for you.

7) You should strive to exchange as many quality links as you can. You can always use Google and Alexa to check the quality and popularity of the link.

8) Keep this point in mind and it certainly is the not the right way to do things, but some webmasters will agree to swap links with you but after a few days/weeks they have never added your link or they delete your link without making you aware of it. If you determine this has happened, then by all means, remove their link.

You need to check periodically every site that says they link to you and see if your link is still on their site. If your link has been removed, you can either contact them and ask why they have removed your link or you to save time, you can just delete theirs and look for other sites.

9) Use text links rather than graphics. The search engines are more receptive to text, than to graphics, but you can use either one or both.

10) When you request a link exchange, you will be more seriously considered if you have your own domain. You need to appear as professionally as possible with your site and simply put, this requires having your own domain. It will cost some money but it will give others the impression that your site is quality in the eyes of your visitors.

And lastly, never forget that any traffic generated from swapping links is free.

Mickey Lieberman is a Computer Consultant with over 30 years of experience working with both IBM mainframes, in various capacities and PC's. If you are looking for resources to help with your website marketing and promotion, you can find many useful tools at http://www.mklbiz.net