Inside This Article

1.  Why websites exchange links 2.  How to choose good link partners

3.  User Friendly and Search Engine Friendly Link Directory 4.  How to maintain your link directory

How to choose good link partners



Here are five criteria to consider when you search for good link partners:

Criterion 1:
Link to sites that provide good, useful content. Link farms with thousands of unrelated links will not do you any good.

Criterion 2:
Link to sites that are related to your site but not in direct competition with you. Sites that are compatible or complementary to your website are ideal candidates.

Criterion 3:
Link to sites that have a prominent text link to the link directory page on the home page. You want their visitors come to your site by following through easy to find links.

Criterion 4:
Link to sites that have properly categorized their main link directory page and on each of the link pages, the number of links should be around 50. Otherwise, it may look like a link farm from search engine's point of view. 100 Links Per Page is what Google likes.

Criterion 5:
Also, as mentioned before, don't link to bad neighborhoods. Investigate a site before you link to it.

6 effective methods of finding link partners

There are many ways to find link partners. The following 6 methods are effective in finding good quality ones.

Method #1: Get inbound links from major directories.

Please refer to List of web directories on wikipedia for more information.

Method #2: Exchange links with your competitors' link partners

• Step 1: Search Google for your targeted keywords and from the SERPs identify your competitors.
  
  
• Step 2: Then, find out who links to your competitors in Google.

  In Google search box, type in "link:www.YourCompetitorDomainName.com" without the quotation marks. Replace www.YourCompetitorDomainName.com by the competitor's actual domain name.

  Note: There must be no space between link: and www.YourCompetitorDomainName.com showing above.

  To learn how to manually search more specific info from Google, use Google's Advanced Search Operators.
  
  

• Step 3: Filter the results obtained from Step 2 and get a list of candidates as your potential link partners.
  
  
• Step 4: Repeat Step 1 and Step 2 but this time search AltaVista. Use the same search syntax as the one for Google.

  To learn how to manually search more specific info from AltaVista, use AltaVista's Special Search Terms.
  
  

• Step 5: Repeat Step 1 and Step 2 but this time search AllTheWeb. Use the same search syntax as the one for Google.

  To learn how to manually search more specific info from AllTheWeb, use AllTheWeb's Query Language Guide.

Repeat the steps with other major search engines.

Method #3: Exchange links with high PR sites in Google Directory

• Step 1: Search Google Directory for sites related to your site.

• Step 2: When you are on Google Directory home page, navigate to a category that is similar to your product or service niche.

• Step 3: When you are in that category, there should be a list of sites with PageRank displayed on the left side. ordered by PageRank in default. This is the best way to quickly find high PR sites that are related to yours. You can also change the ordering by click "View in alphabetical order".
  
  For example:
  

The easiest way to identity a category is to search your targeted keywords and then look at what category each site has been listed under. This way, you get a basic idea about what categories you need to look at for related sites.

Method #4: Find sites that have explicit link exchange requests

The following steps show how to locate sites which actively seeking link partners.

• Step 1: Search Google for sites related to your site. For example, "Website Design". It returned 6,160,000 sites when I searched.

• Step 2: Scroll to the bottom of the first result page. On the left hand side of the "Google Search" button, there should be a link called "Search within results". Click it to narrow down your search.
  
  

• Step 3: After you click "Search within results", you see a new page and you can search more specific keywords. Try searching theses:

  link to us
  add url
  submit url
  submit link
  add link
  add link
  link to us
  intitle:link to us
  intitle:add url
  intitle:submit url
  intitle:submit link
  intitle:add link
  intitle:add link
  intitle:link to us
  

  You can also try "allinurl" search clause for addurl.htm, addurl.html, etc... to get all pages that have that exact name. Use your imagination to here.

  Check Google's Advanced Search Operators for what the operators mean.

Repeat the same steps in Altavista, AllTheWeb, etc., you will soon be overwhelmed by the amount of sites you can link to.

Method #5: Use free link exchange service to find link partners

LinkPartners.com provides free categorized directory of quality websites that trade reciprocal links with other sites. Follow their instructions to get started.

Method #6: Use link building automation software

Manually performing all the tasks to manage building your link directory takes a lot of time. This is where automation comes to the rescue.

IBP linking building tool is a top rated link popularity and link management program that helps you build a powerful business network quickly and easily.

IBP is not just about link building automation. It also provides a free internet marketing ebook, packed with tons of useful traffic building tips.

The 59 pages FREE eBook covers everything from an introduction to search engine marketing to tips and tricks on how to improve your order page. The is full of tips. Download it now.

To learn how to build both user friendly and search engine friendly link directories, follow the links on the next page.


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Inside This Article 1.  Why websites exchange links 2.  How to choose good link partners     3.  User Friendly and Search Engine Friendly Link Directory 4.  How to maintain your link directory Other Recent Articles from the Internet Marketing category: 1. Why websites exchange links