Reciprocal Links

Establishing good, quality inbound links for your website is what effectively weaves you into the world wide web and one way to go about getting inbound links to your web pages is to establish reciprocal links.

There are several ways to establish quality inbound links, however one of the easiest, fastest and FREE ways is through reciprocal link exchanges.

For those that can find the time to work on reciprocal linking I suggest using Ken Envoy's Value Exchange program.  It's an excellent free tool that requires a simple signup requesting your site information and email address. Your site will be submitted to a pool of other users where interested link partners can contact you for exchanges. The big benefit here is potential link partners can contact you.

You can find the Value Exchange tool here:
http://value-exchange.sitesell.com/

When setting up your reciprocal link exchange program pay attention to these tips and tactics that will help streamline and effectively get your site recognized.
 
1. Always link to "like" sites. For example, a site related to pet care should only link to sites that deal in pet care or pet related items.

2. Never link to a site that has no Google pagerank.
Many sites are penalized by the search engines for search engine spamming. If you link to one of those penalized sites you can also be penalized by the search engines as well. 
 
Of course, not all sites with no pagerank are penalized, however, to be safe, don't link to them until they do achieve some ranking.

3. Don't worry about low page rank. 
I was always told to only link to pages with high Google page rank. While linking to a higher ranked page is certainly not a bad thing, I don't necessarily think it's the only way to go.

Search engines put much more emphasis on quality content sites that benefit a visitor.  If the site you link to fits this characteristic, then a lower page rank should not be a deciding factor in whether or not to link to it.

4. Create 3-4 site titles and descriptions for link exchanges.
Take your 3-4 best keywords, the keywords that you want to be listed for on the search engines, and create 3-4 separate titles and descriptions.

For example, let's say your site is about cat grooming and your three keyword phrases are:

cat grooming
cat bathing
cat supplies

Create an separate title and description for each keyword phrase and distribute a different title and description to each link partner.  This way you will get your all your keyword phrases out there instead of just one.

5.  Place a link on your site first before making a request. This can boost incentive to reciprocate.

6. Don't put more than 20 links on a page.
Create an index page for all your link pages and keep the links to no more than 20 on a page. Too many links can discourage the search engines.

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