Unless most of your visitors get your website address from print advertising or word of mouth, or you want to depend on paid online advertising forever, using linking to boost your rank and bring in visitors is essential to your site’s success.

About Search Engines
Search Engines like Google, MSN etc. are used by internet users to locate information and products on the web. When an internet user types in a word or phrase (“keywords”) to search for, the engine goes through it’s enormous database to find sites that match this word, or words. It then returns the results ranked in the order it deems most pertinent. Every Search engine uses a different algorithm to make this determination (and keep the details secret), so optimizing a site for good rankings is not an exact science. However, it is known that one of the variables in the algorithm is usually the number of links to a site.

The links, and indeed all of the info gathered about your site, comes from the Search Engine “Web Crawlers” (or spiders) that go through the web and collect information for the search engine's database to use in indexing the sites. One of the things many web crawlers pay attention to is how many other sites have links that go to your site.

About Linking
Many Search Engines (notably Google) give higher ranking to websites with many incoming links. Think of each link from another website to your site as a "vote" for your site. However, this is not a democracy and all votes are not equal! Links from sites TO your site when there is no corresponding link from your site to theirs (one way links) are worth more. Links from sites that are related in content to yours are worth more. Links from sites that are highly ranked are worth much more. And lastly links from sites with an .edu or a .gov are given more weight.

Links from "bad neighborhood" sites (gambling, porn); links you have paid for, and links from sites who use questionable practices to boost their SE rank can hurt your rank.

An "ideal" link is a one-way link to your site, from a quality site, related in content to yours on a well ranked page (Google PR2 or more.) Note: You can find out the rank of web pages by adding a Google toolbar to your Internet Explorer or Firefox browser.
http://toolbar.google.com

Link exchanges are also helpful if from good sites, but you will need a few more of them to get the same boost as one quality, one-way link. It is important to remember that many sites just starting out will want link exchanges, and may not have attained a good page rank yet. If you think the site looks like it is destined to do well, you could exchange with them, even if they do not yet have a good page rank. It is usually easier to link with sites that are not well established, and gain advantage from it as it develops. Well ranked sites are not as eager to exchange links (they don't need to if they are well ranked), so you need to strike a balance between the two.

So you may be wondering "How do I get links to my site?"

Savvy webmasters understand linking, and it is usually not too difficult to set up a “link exchange” where you put a link to someone's website on your own and they return the favor. This is advantageous to both parties and is fairly simple to do.

You will find some services and webmasters offer 3-way linking. You link to their site, and they link to yours from another site they control. This sets up a way for the two sites that are getting links to have one-way links. However, I have personally found it difficult to find three way link opportunities that allow the link I'm getting to come from a quality, related site. If you find a good three way link opportunity, go ahead and grab it.


How to set up a link program (basic instructions):
Start by making with a page for your links. It could be called Links, Link Partners, Resources or something else that will make sense for your site.

Consider putting a disclaimer on your links page that you are not responsible for the content, performance etc. of the sites you link to.

Put an html hyperlink from your home page to your new links page. If your new links page is a resource page that is truly helpful to your site's visitors, you can put the link in your main navigation area. If the page is really just for exchanging links, you may want to just put it at the bottom of the page where it won't attract your visitors, but will be indexed by search engines.

Make sure you have instructions either on your link page, or on a separate instruction page of how you handle linking. This makes it quick and easy for people to complete a link exchange with you.

Example:
"We consider link exchanges with quality, search engine friendly sites related to our own in content. If you wish to exchange links with us please contact us at..." Then include your linking info for them to post on their links page.


Now contact desirable sites and ask for a link
Target sites you want to link to and contact them. Email is usually best, though with people you know a phone call is also a good way to go, with a reminder email if they agree.

If you are a member of an organization or club, you can often get a one way link from their site. Make sure you get a link on all sites you qualify for, for instance, your Chamber of Commerce, if you're a member, or your city or county website may also list businesses that they license. Ask for one way links anywhere else you can think of that is appropriate.

Do Google searches for similar or complementary websites and look them over. Check their page rank. If they have a links or resources page, check its page rank. If the page is indexed in Google and there are not already too many other links on the page (50 or less, less being better) then send an email.

Example Letter: (You can edit this letter as needed)
_____________________________________________
Dear ***
I am the owner of the YOUR WEBSITE NAME website, and I would like to like to invite you to exchange links with us. Link exchanges with quality sites related in content, as you probably already know, can help boost the search engine ranking of both of the sites involved.

I have personally visited your site, and feel that it is of a quality and subject matter that would be a good match for mine.

Your link will be placed here on my site: **URL of your LINKS PAGE**

Here is the info for a reciprocal link:

URL: YOUR URL
Title: YOUR WEBSITE NAME OR TITLE
Description: - KEYWORD RICH DESCRIPTION OF YOUR SITE

Please let me know if you do add us to your site, and send us your preferred linking info, (we will reciprocate within 24 hours and email you). We would also be glad to add you first, and notify you, if you request it.

Many thanks and best wishes for your success.

YOUR SIGNATURE

________________________________________________

Set aside a certain amount of time each week, or month, to increase your links. After you have enough links to rank well in your target search engine(s), it is still a good idea to check, add, and update on a maintenance basis. Don't expect your queries to all be answered. If you can get one out of 15 "cold calls" to respond, then you are doing well. People are busy, so even your friends or relatives might need a second nudge.

You can, if you choose, send a follow up to your initial inquiry if you haven't received a response within, say 7 days. Try to think of something to put in the subject line of your emails that might catch attention, yet not look "spammy".

If you update your own site, you can do the whole thing yourself. If you do not know how to add the links to your site, have your web professional do it. By getting link exchanges set up in advance, and simply providing your webmaster with the linking info once the agreement has been made, it can be done quickly and should only take your webmaster a few minutes to add each exchange link to your site.

Some helpful hints:
Most links are good, but links on sites that are similar in nature to yours will be given more weight than links on unrelated websites, so better to stick with your industry, or interest, in general, though it's fine to exchange links with your best friend's blog or your mom's recipe site. Try to find sites that are complimentary, but not in direct competition with yours. If they do what YOU do, choose sites that are out of your geographic area.

Try to incorporate your keywords into your linking text, especially the actual hyperlink.

Change your site's linking text, your hyperlink and even the page it links to from time to time. Google sees links with differing text and targets as more organic, natural links and gives them more weight accordingly.

Do your linking as an ongoing program. A few new links every month for a year may be better than 24 links all at once. Again, Google apparently likes to see natural growth in a site.

If the page that a site is putting your link on already has 50 or more links, and yours will go on the bottom of the list, don't bother, the worth of the link will be too diluted.

I have personally found that auto linking systems and exchange sites are mostly worthless, and some can actually be detrimental. If you decide to use them, choose them with care.

There are SEO services that can do linking for you, and a few are really good at it (there are also a lot of these that offer worthless services and make unrealistic claims). Again, choose with care, and be prepared to pay a good service accordingly. You may want to do a trial run, and ask for a report showing the links they have set up for you. Check them for quality, rank and relevance.

Protect your site's good name. If you have any doubts about linking to a site, or if you think there might be anything questionable about how a service does it's linking, walk away. All the well known SEO experts agree, good old fashioned persistence, hard work, and honesty are the safest way to build your online reputation and rank. Once lost, your site's good standing can be difficult, or impossible to retrieve!

Some things to watch out for:
Though it is not well known, web crawlers have trouble reading website information unless it is in plain html code on a page. This means if someone puts your link on their site, but the page it is on is hidden by the code, it is useless to you. In the meanwhile, the site you are supposedly "trading" with ends up with a valuable one-way link from your site. Some examples are:

Sites that use Frames
100% Flash sites (rare)
Sites that hide the linking code in scripts and outside file references. (common)
Buried links (too many clicks to get from the home site to the place where your link is. It should be no more than 3 clicks, and preferably 2 or less.)

Most of the above are not intentional, but I've seen quite a few sites that obviously hid the links page on purpose!

Some of the above are hard to identify unless you can read the source code. Luckily frames and Flash sites are not too common, and you can generally tell a regular html hyperlink by the way it looks, and follow it to the links page (count clicks.)

How can you tell for sure?

1. If their home page is well ranked and their links page is shows no page rank, it's a good indicator they are doing something unethical. An exchange with them will be worthless to you. (Again, a Google Toolbar will help you see page rank - toolbar.google.com)

2. If you can't see the link from their home page to their links page in the code, then neither can the web crawler. With their home page open go to your browsers top menu bar and click "view" and then "source" or "page source" (the wording may be different depending on your browser). Find the area where the link should be. At first it may look confusing, but you will see the actual page content between the code tags. If there is a readable hyperlink starting with http:// and pointing to their links page, it's OK. If not, then they are trying to pull one over on you. If you have any question, have your webmaster check it for you.

Overall, linking should be something you keep up with during the lifetime of your site. At first you may have to work at it often. Then, as your rank improves, you will find more people coming to you, asking for links, and you can choose the best of these. If your site is well done and offers valuable info, you will find that people will link to you (one-way) without you even having to ask. Soon, the linking thing will happen without you needing to work at it much at all.

Good luck and happy linking!

© 2007 JT Dataworks

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