7. Organize originals in a binder where customers can see them, or so you can bring them with you on calls.

8. Make a separate piece of literature that contains nothing but your best testimonials… call it "Our brag" sheet or "People are talking about us… and we LOVE it!"

9. If possible, eliminate dates on your testimonials; if it's too old it loses some of it's punch, even though everything they said is still just as valid as when it was first written.

10. Can you take photos of your happy customers with your product? Some products lend themselves better to photographs than others; that's something only you can decide, but if it's a particularly large or well-known customer a photo could add more impact. (Remember, though, that if you use a photo of someone you will probably need some sort of release from them allowing you to use it for promotional purposes. And, if you didn't take photo yourself, there could be some copyright issues to consider, so get some legal advice before you use photos in your marketing materials. It sounds like a lot of trouble, but a good photo is pretty powerful in establishing credibility for you and/or your product or service.)

Start collecting testimonials today, even if you're not quite sure how you're going to use them. Then, when you're ready, you'll have a boatload to choose from.

GO FOR IT!

**Enough With The Rules Already**

Before you go contacting webmasters, now would be a good time to set up your Main Links page on your website. On this page you are going to describe how a webmaster can add their link to your Links Pages. You can call this Favorite Links, Personal Links or something similar. Basically anything that lets visitors know you have a Quality links page available.

Your Main Links Page should have several categories for visitors to choose from. Each category should link to a separate page on your site where category links can be viewed. Remember to set each link so that it opens in a new window when a visitor clicks on it because you don't want them leaving your site altogether and forget where they started out from.

On this page you'll invite your visitors to apply for privelege of linking to you. Why should they have to apply? Because you want to screen their website to be sure it doesn't directly compete with yours and that it also compliments yours in some way. You can see my links page at www.cashway.com . Just click on Resource Links at top of page.

You also want to indicate to your visitors that a reciprocal link back from their website is a requirement for obtaining a link on this page. Those who are serious about Reciprocal Linking will understand and be willing to place a link on their page.

Why not just use a FFA website and link to 1,000's or millions of webpages?

FFA pages play a small role in your advertising but they shouldn't be included in a Reciprocal Linking strategy because people rarely see FFA sites or their messages and Search Engines don't recognize them in their criteria for determining link popularity. It's best to stay away from them as a way to develop reciprocal links for your website.

**Contacting Webmasters**

Again best webmasters to contact are ones whose websites compliment yours in some way. How do you find sites and contact webmasters?

The simplest way is to go to one of major search engines, enter in terms that describes websites you want to link to and let search engine bring up lists for you. You can get several hundred email address just by visiting these sites and contacting webmaster.

It is always best to send a short email to webmaster introducing yourself and stating reason you're contacting them. You may want to give information for them to add your link to their Link Page or simply start a dialog to see if there is a mutual interest in linking.

For best results I like to find websites that compliment mine, then add them to an appropriate link page and then send website owner a personal email telling them I liked their site, have added it to my Quality Links page and ask if they would link back to my website. I also like to tell them of some of benefits of Reciprocal Linking and even go as far as helping them set up their own page if they don't have a good quality links page. Some willlink back to you and some won't. If they don't simply delete link.

Implementing a reciprocal linking strategy does take time and effort, but it is easily manageable. Combined with an overall web promotion strategy it can be a powerful way for you to develop relevant, targeted traffic to your web pages as well as help to increase your websites overall position in search engines.