By Daniel D Dwase

Before you know the do's and don'ts of reciprocal linking, you must understand how to link to other sites to advertise your business and get more visitors.

Here I will unravel some secrets to make your linking methods more strategic and effective.

• Understand the objective of your linking because this is the basis on which you can make your strategies. Fully understanding your business, your industry and your competitors can help you make an informed decision while requesting for link from another site.

• Find out about websites that best complements your business. You should link to websites that are relevant to yours. But, the fact is you are linking to a site to provide information to your visitors and not only for search engines. Hence your linking should be based on information on the page you are linking to.

• Understanding reciprocal linking strategies of your competitors can also be a good start. For example research sites that have exchanged links with your competitor and request to exchange links with them also.

If you are planning to build a strategic link exchange program here is a checklist that can make your efforts more result oriented:

• Your chances of getting links from a site are higher if you place a link to that site on yours. Make sure you create links to other sites on your webpages before you send emails requesting for one.
• Like any other link building strategies, reciprocal linking focuses on quality of links. Focusing on high quality links will make your efforts more successful.

So, links from sites with high page rank (PR) is more valuable. Also, if you have high PR, it is easier for you to get links from sites you have requested.

Make your site worth linking to and link to sites that are relevant and complement yours and of high quality.

• While linking to another site, don't ignore the importance of your visitors to that site. It's really necessary that the pages you are linking to must be worthy for your readers and the topic should be relevant. Similarly, sites linking to you will look for something valuable for their visitors on your site. Unique, relevant and informative content on your site can be of great help for you in this regard. Exchanging links between two interesting sites will definitely help visitors of both sites.
• Don't embed links on a page where no one visits.

It will hardly make anyone feel motivated to exchange link with your site.

So as far as possible keep your links pages close to your home page. While asking for links, request that the webmaster keep their links pages closer to their home page as well.

Requesting for a link exchange is not always easy. Sometimes, webmasters of sites you've requested to exchange links with may not feel inspired to link to your site even though you link to theirs.

... So here are some guidelines about how to increase your chances of success in reciprocal linking:

• Try to keep your request as brief as possible. Busy webmasters lack the time and interest to read long emails. So, write comprehensive and precise emails.
• Be specific about the reasons that prompted you to link to that site. Simultaneously, explain how linking to your site can benefit their site. Comment on a particular topic which will make webmasters feel that you have properly noticed them. It will also add value to your request and save your email from being added to the list of junk mails. Increase your chances of getting a link by discussing some of their recent posts.
• Don't hesitate to link to other sites in your articles. It builds credibility.

However, there are some "don'ts" of reciprocal linking that you must follow to avoid any hassles that may occur:

• Do away with any kind of link tricks such as redirects. Webmasters do not like this idea.
• The worst thing you can do for your business is to exchange links with link farms or other spammy programs.
• Don't link to too many websites on the same page and make your page appear like a list of websites.

Take time to plan your reciprocal linking program and increase traffic to your website along with your search engine ranking.

See also "How to Generate More Inbound Links"

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