5. Branding It takes consumers sometimes up to 7-10 "views" of a product or service before they decide to buy. Many online marketing experts point to autoresponders as a top way to get into minds of potential customers repeatedly until they see you are a serious business and take that last look at what you have to offer.

Well, say you have 100-300+ links on sites that your best, most targeted potential customers visit regularly. They visit a site and there you are. They click a link to another related site and, bang, there you are AGAIN being recommended by yet another site they are interested in and appreciate!

Your name starts to become branded in their minds and they start thinking, "Man, Jack is everywhere and he must be serious business - EVERYONE points to his site!"

You are going to start converting people by pre-qualifying them to be receptive to whatever you offer BEFORE they even get to your site with this system!

6. Pre-Qualified Hyper-Targeted Traffic If you have a basic, keyword-laden, up-front description you use to put your link description on other peoples' sites, you are generating pre-qualified traffic to your site.

It's same thing as when you are listed in search engines properly. If you set up your site to be spidered properly and result is a link that instantly defines exactly what your site is about in description, people who click that link come to you with EXPECTATIONS!

If you have done your job "on-site" and you fulfill those expectations, you are basically licensing yourself to print money!

With walls of your customers down, all objections remaining to be dealt with on-site, after they click your link should be dealt with in your sales copy, or in your autoresponder sequence when you get them signed up on your list.

Then its all over. You have last piece of puzzle in turning browsers to buyers.

An article is no place to define a complete linking campaign. I wrote a 112 page ebook on subject, so suffice it to say, there is a lot to this and there's always more you can do to cast your net on internet sea of opportunity through linking.

I hope you have an idea now of power and importance of linking and why you should spend a decent percentage of your marketing time on building and running a serious linking campaign for your site.

As marketers we are constantly leaving signs (links, ads) all over net in as high-traffic areas as possible. And many times we are simply claiming turf and leaving our "scent."

I claim my piece of internet turf when it comes to linking, and you can bet that when I am leaving signs of my presence, I am going to stretch as high as possible to leave most impressive and biggest sign on each "tree" as I possibly can.

Either to let my competitors know "Hey, you are going to have trouble with me if you challenge my turf" or to let customers know "Hey, I have best product and most skill at getting you what you need, come see me sometime."

There are many other parallels that can be drawn from my tracking days to my work on net today. It is just very interesting to know that such a "wild" past career could even come close to affecting my path on internet, let alone shape exactly how I got to be biggest bear in my niche of "e-woods!"

You may also like to know that as an internet marketer you are doing oldest, most basic instinctual work possible by leaving signs and attracting attention to yourself and your products.

I used to be fond of saying "Linking is as old as web itself" to give people an idea of oldest form of internet marketing in existence. But then, humans, bears, deer, mountain lions, bobcats, and wolves to name a few have been "linking" to each other for eons!

Kind of makes my statement, which was meant to draw attention to how very "old" linking is as a form of leaving signs for others to follow, seem trite. But then, 10+ years is also eons in internet terms, so I guess it still fits.

Anyway, next time you "hike your leg" readying yourself to leave sign of your presence somewhere on net, think of that bear...out there in big outside, scratching his back and sharpening his claws on biggest tree in woods.

Be that bear in your online marketing efforts. Stretch yourself to be tallest, strongest bear in your niche to attract what you need (traffic) and repel that which threatens you (other people encroaching on your turf). There's no better offline example of competition, marketing, or determination than a big 'ol bear protecting his turf and attracting "ladies."