YOU CAN AVOID THE DELETE KEY WITH GLOWING PRAISE

When you send those tired form-letter-type reciprocal link requests to webmasters, they'll often delete them without even a second glance. Here, they open their email to something they actually WANT to see - praise for their hard work and a little love from their web site customers. When you send a testimonial along with your link request, you are now offering something of real value in exchange for that link. That webmaster suddenly feels grateful for your kind words and may even feel that they have an obligation to link to you if they use your testimonial.

If you are a customer of an online product or service and you're truly pleased with them, why not send webmaster a testimonial and tell them you'd be happy to have them publish your comments on their site? They will be pleased at your offer if your praise is short (one or two sentences) and highly complimentary of them. Include a hypertext link to your site or your e-mail in note and tell them you'd be happy to have your comments published and request a link to your site.

NEW PRODUCTS TESTIMONIALS PROVIDE HIGHER LINKING POTENTIAL

Some webmasters actively solicit customer testimonials to push new products or services. If you are among first to purchase those new products or services, your testimonial praising them will be particularly desirable as they seek new comments to use in their promotional sales letter page or as teasers from home page. Give them what THEY want and they may be happy to offer you that link. If they respect YOU as a customer, they might even promote your site in email promotions.

Most sites have a page of happy customer testimonials and most offer a link back to your site or your e-mail so their potential clients can follow-up with you. Take a look at those businesses you patronize online and see if they offer those linkbacks. Then tell them how happy you are to do business with them and watch your PageRank increase and traffic grow!

Check your own Link Popularity with a free Software download: http://website101.com/download/link-popularity-software.html

Mike Valentine is SEO at http://RealEstateDirectory411.com

6) When you receive a link request visit site and check that it meets with your requirements as set down on your link pages. Is it a quality site with good content or just a "link farm"? If it doesn't meet your requirements don't link to it.

The webmaster SHOULD have already linked to your site but be prepared to overlook that breech of linking protocol if it's from a good quality, high PR site.

7) Beware of webmasters who add your site to their "directory" which turns out to nothing but a link farm i.e. has no useful content, just a bunch of links, and asks you to link to an entirely different site, one that HAS good content. These webmasters are playing you for a sucker. The benefit is all theirs.

8) As I said in point #1, links from high PR pages are worth more than links from low or no PR pages. Seek out high PR linking partners but keep in mind it is PR of actual page your link is on that matters, NOT PR of home page. In other words if home page PR is 5, but page your link is on is several layers deep in directory, it will probably have a PR of 0 and be of little benefit to you. Check PR of actual page your link is on, or is going to be on, before agreeing to exchange links.

Each page on your links directory should be no more than one click away from your home page, and your linking partner's site should be same. If your link is placed on a page which looks something like this - directory/category/subcategory/subcategory with your link - you will derive NO value from that link.

9) Be prepared to negotiate your links. Savvy webmasters understand value of links from high PR pages. If you add a link to a PR-0 page on your site don't expect your link partner to put your link on a PR-6 page, and your link partner shouldn't expect same from you. Exchange value for like value.

When you first start out your site may not have any PR due to a lack of incoming links. This reduces your bargaining power. However, you can overcome this by getting your site listed in as many large business directories as possible. Some of these you will have to pay, such as Yahoo and Microsoft's Business Directory, but many others are free. You'll find a good list here:

http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php

10) Be specific about how you want your link partner to link to you. It is MOST important that link to you contain your targeted keywords in anchor (linked) text. When I ask for a link to my site I don't want link title to be:

Steve Pronger Web Business Solutions

Instead, I ask for:

Create Website | Small Business Website Designer

or whichever keywords I am targeting at time. A search for those keywords at Google will illustrate my point!

11) And finally, here is an excellent resource to help you find quality link partners. It's called Value Exchange, and will put you in contact with like-minded webmasters:

http://www.stevepronger.com/value_exchange.htm