* Web site URL and a short description of web site and what it offers.

* Make a note of "special" features on web site which you can usefully put in your e-mail to *prove* you have actually visited site. This goes a long way to countering SPAM problems.

Step # 4 - Build Your Partner Link Directory. ---------------------------------------------

Build your Partner Link's directory using a separate HTML page for each distinct category.

Add URL link and comment for each qualified site into relevant category page(s).

Make your directory pleasurable to visit, where visitors find information quickly and easily.

Ensure ithe directory is easily found and reached from your main web pages.

Step 5 - e-Mail The Webmaster -----------------------------

Using e-mail addresses, write to each Webmaster you have linked to.

Tell them :

* The URL address of page where their link can be found

* Your own web site link information (URL and descriptive comments)

Finish by asking for a reciprocal link in their directory.

Make e-mail personal and you might like to use *special* feature note you made to help your request achieve success.

Step #6 - Maintain Your Directory ---------------------------------

A partner directory is a work in constant progress.

It must change quickly to reflect obsolete, dead, new, and modified links and web sites.

This maintains it's usefulness to your visitors.

Depending on size, verifying links may be more than you can achieve easily by your own efforts. Offer prizes to visitors who find and inform you of links that are no longer useful.

Maintenance also means giving added prominence to entries for other webmasters who respond to your mail and tell you that they have added your link and web site information to their own directories.

You can add a small graphic next to each Partner link making it stand out from other web sites that have not provided a reciprocal links.

Remember your directory exists to provide useful content to your visitors. Do not immediately remove a non reciprocating web site, if it adds value to your visitors.

Step #7 - Repeat ----------------

Go through six steps above regularly and over a period of 3 to 6 months you should notice a significant and sustained rise in targeted traffic from complimentary sites as well as a rise in search engine rankings for your specific keyword phrases.

------------------------------------------------------------ Conclusion

Building a useful, tightly themed, Partner Link directory is a "No cost" traffic and ranking builder.

Will you devote 15 minutes to this today, and into future ?

------------------------------------------------------------ Charles Kangethe of http://www.simplyeasier.com is a leading new wave Netpreneur and a published author from England. The "Simply Easier" brand name is your guarantee of high value, quality Marketing Products, Services and Resources. ----------------------------------------------------------- -

Remember content we talked about earlier? Well as you create your own tips and articles for your website or email newsletters, consider pre-licensing it to others. Pre-licensing it for others is as simple as including a short footer after your work. It looks something like this:

"You have permission to reprint what you just read. Use it in your ezine, at your website or in your newsletter. The only requirement is including following footer..."

*Article by YOUR NAME, visit www.YourWebsiteUrl.com for more original content like this.

This takes no extra work on your part since you already wrote article. A simple footer like that lets you pre-licensed it to entire web. Your links will be growing continually with no extra effort. There are lots of websites in need of decent content. Supply it and you can benefit greatly - if you do it right!

And beauty of this strategy, is that only sites in your niche will use your content. This means your links will be high quality links from sites in your niche. This goes a long way with search engines.

Note: If you need to see this strategy in action, visit my articles archive at: http://www.bizweb2000.com/articles.htm

b. Bribe webmasters into linking up.

The next strategy that can work very well is "bribe". In a nutshell, you simply give something of value away to webmasters who links to your site.

When done correctly, this strategy can be extremely powerful. All you need to get started is a web page with a few text links that webmasters can use to link to your site. When they link up, give them a report or ebook about your niche. It does not have to be anything elaborate, just something that helps them learn what they came for in first place.

Of course you want to let these webmasters know that they need a site in same niche as yours. You really do not want unrelated sites linking in, just sites in your niche.

You can even automate all aspects of "bribe" and save lots of time. See my "Internet Marketer's Resource Directory" at http://linksmanager.com/bizweb2000/ for how I've done that.

My directory bribes my visitors into linking to one of my sites, by offering two distinct rewards... a directory listing for their best Internet Marketing Resource, and a free ebook on permission email marketing.

Note: The tool that automates my link building strategy is called LinksManager. While there are many automated solutions available, be careful when selecting yours. Many are not search engine friendly and using a link network or link farm designed to trick search engines, can be detrimental to your link campaign! The one I use is simply a time saving tool. It sends emails to new submissions, checks their site for a live link to mine, and gives away my ebook when link is verified. When visitors link to my site, their links are set up directly to my site, so it is search engine friendly. I've been using it for a few years now with great success. And no, I'm not an affiliate. ;-)

If you have an Internet Marketing resource to promote, submit your site to my directory so you can see how it works. After you submit your listing, pay special attention to page that gives webmasters exact link code to paste into their sites. You should use a page like that at your site as well. It makes linking very simple, even for new webmasters. In fact, feel free to copy layout of that page and customize it with your own keywords and links for YOUR site.

Now let's get to that other aspect of quality links...

[X] Exactly How Sites Link to You.

For sure, text links are better than banner links. And text links filled with your best keywords are better than any old text link.

For instance...

If you were trying to build links to your, let's say... fishing equipment site, how other sites display links to yours is extremely important. To decide what you want those links to say, you need to research keywords a bit. The word "fishing", would seem obvious but it undoubtedly has a ton of competition. So a better idea is to find more specific words. You can do that by entering your main keyword into tool at WordTracker.com or at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ and you'll get a list of related keywords. This particular test showed me that keywords "fishing tackle" or "fishing lure" get quite a bit of searching as well. So those would be a better choice of keywords to use in your incoming links.

But how do you decide what those other webmasters will write when they link to your site? That's easy. You do it by giving those webmasters exact code they can paste into their sites, as I do when someone submits a URL to my directory above. In case above, code they would be asked to put on their site would be a short sentence such as "Down-south fishing lures - clever tackle for clever fish." The term "fishing lures" would be hyperlinked to fishing site. ;-)

In Closing...

OK, so is everything in this article all you have to do to move your site up ranks of major search engines like Google? Well, not really. There are lots of other considerations such as title of your site. Your title needs to include your best keywords as well. And so does text of your pages. But I'll save details on these for another article. For now, get busy building quality content and quality links. They are two keys to success of your website.

That wraps up today's tip! If you take one lesson from it remember, QUALITY CONTENT plus QUALITY LINKS will bring you lots of quality website traffic.

Article by Jim Daniels http://www.make-a-living-online.com - How to Make A Living Online

??? Did you find this article useful? If so, get Jim's BizWeb eGazette at http://www.bizweb2000.com/gazette/ and you'll get info like this every two weeks.