3) GIVE YOUR COMPLIMENTS

When you purchase a product and it exceeds your expectations, e-mail business a testimonial or endorsement. Make sure your statement is detailed. Give them permission to publish it on their web site if they link to your site.

Another option would be to write a review of their web site or product.Write about benefits you gained from web site or product. Allow them to publish it if they link to your web site.

QUICK READ SUMMARY

1) Give webmasters option of linking to your online community or start a chat web ring.

2) Allow visitors to post your content on their web site if they link to your site.

3) Allow webmasters to publish your compliments on their web site or ad if they link back to your site.

Have you surfed web and located sites that you would like to provide a link to you? Spend some time contacting them: worst they can do is say "No" to your request.

As more sites give you links you will find that more visitors get to you this way, especially if what your site deals with is specialized . Creating links is a way of finding your "target" audience. And of course, Google will rank you higher, and hopefully not as a demon.

At artsiteguide, which is off to a good start without Yahoo!, a single free link from a major art site sends me one-third of my traffic. How do I track this? I would recommend that you get Stattrack (http://www.stattrack.com). This device will tell you which of your links is bringing in traffic. You will be suprised as you build up links to find that they may out-do search engines by quite a margin.

Finally, one more idea. Create an award that you can give to one or more of websites that you would like to link to your page. I have an award called "editor's choice" with a small but handsome banner. When I have given this to other sites (with real selectivity) they will often fly banner with a link back to artsiteguide. That amounts to a free banner ad, possibly from a site that may not have linked to you before.

In future of crowded internet, link relationships are of increasing importance and apearance of search engines like Google and Clever may underscore this development.