The Problem

No matter how good your product or service is, if you are not receiving targeted visitors to your site or if your web site is not well ranked by Search engines you will not sell much.

A solid, reciprocal linking strategy, properly executed will deliver both targeted visitors and improve your web site rank for your chosen keywords and all for "no money down."

Step #1 - Specific Keyword Search ---------------------------------

It is important that your chosen keyword phrases are as specific as possible.

Scott Buresh of http://www.mediumblue.com/ says this about keywords and using "geographic", "adjective" and "noun" modifiers to make them specific.

"Modifiers are used for two main reasons: to increase percentage of ideal prospects in traffic phrase attracts, and to find terms that are easier to target on search engines. Adding right type of modifiers to your search engine key phrases will increase your chances of success."

This step involves effort and a capacity to brainstorm because you need a minimum of 100 keyword phrases for good results. Good search engine optimisers build lists of 300 specific or more keyword phrases.

The following resources will be of use as you build your keyword phrase list

* Overture Suggestion Tool - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

* Good Keywords by Softnik Technologies - http://www.goodkeywords.com

* Use a search engine to research "Keyword Phrases" and learn more practical details on this critical task.

Step #2 - Suitable Link Partners --------------------------------

Your ideal link partners are web sites based on

* High quality content - Ideally material (articles, reviews, reports, e-books etc) should be original, fresh and informative to visitors.

* Tight web site themes - The content addresses a specific business, product or service type.

* Tight directory themes - A link to link directory should be prominently shown on main pages and directory must be tightly themed and not just a "link farm" of general, non-related web sites.

* Complimentary themes - While you may not want direct competitors to feature in your directory, complimentary sites that fulfil above features will provide great value to your visitors.

Step # 3 - Find and Review Link Partners ----------------------------------------

Now, find web sites who may be "good" link partners.

Using a search engine or directory, go through each keyword phrase in your list and visit as many of web sites that are returned as you can.

Evaluate each site on basis of criteria set in step #2.

Decide on categories you want in your directory.

For an Internet marketing business these would typically be "Affiliate Programs", "Business Promotion", "Income Opportunities" an so on.

Qualifying web sites, may of course fall into more than one category depending on their business, product or service offerings.

With this information you can now make another list of :

Search Engine Traffic.

Specifically, traffic from google.com, yahoo.com and search.msn.com - leaders web searching.

Since visitors from search engines find sites on their own, traffic is top quality and conversion rate is excellent. And since it is without cost, search engine traffic simply cannot be beat.

In this article you'll discover how YOU can maximize traffic from search engines. And no, I do not have a trick or overnight solution. If you are looking for that, you can stop reading now. But what I will share with you today WILL increase your search engine traffic. I can all but guarantee it. Sure, it will take some time but believe me, it is well worth a little patience.

So let's go...

The first thing to consider is how best search sites determine where to send their clients -- searchers. It does not happen by accident. In fact all search engines have complex algorithms that determine how they rank sites.

But after all smoke clears, I can point directly to ONE essential component that leads to ever-growing traffic from major search engines...

QUALITY.

Quality is what matters most to top search engines. They want to give quality results to people using their search engine.

Read that again. It is important to understand. As a webmaster, quality is something you need to be very concerned with. And there are two specific areas where quality really counts...

1. Quality of Content AT your Website 2. Quality of Links TO Your Website.

Let's talk about those two components in a bit of detail.

Quality Component #1: Informative content at your website

A quality website with solid, reliable and substantial content will always do better than sites trying to "trick" their way to good ranking. Think about it for a moment. Why do top search sites have such a huge market share? Simple. They provide quality search results. That's how they got more people use them to find what they were looking for.

Therefore, websites offering lots of quality information are usually first sites presented in their search results.

There is no secret to this. And providing quality content takes work. I do it by writing articles like one you are reading now. And you can do it by writing articles for YOUR niche market and posting them at your site.

If your site focuses on collectibles, don't just post up your items and hope to sell them. Instead, write an article about a specific collectible every week. Tell it's history and why it is worth so much. Write about how to tell an original from a counterfeit. You get idea.

In a year you will have 52 keyword-rich web pages (or more) that will help grow traffic to your website. In two years you'll have 100+. And this content is cornerstone of your website.

[Tech note: As you post each article at your website, make sure new web page links back to your main page. Also make sure your main page has a link to either a site map or an article listing. That will help search engines find all that great content when they spider your site.]

I've been writing about this aspect of web marketing for seven years now. And I can remember a few years back when many experts were writing, "Don't waste your time on content, just put up a single page sales letter." But what would web be like if it were just a network of single page sales letters?

The web is all about information.

Let's face it, nearly ALL people online are here to get information. Not many people want to pay for it either. After all, you can find in-depth information on any subject imaginable. Sure, you sometimes have to pay for best quality information, but if you surf long enough you can get to truth of any subject using World Wide Web.

If you are a website owner, paragraphs above translate into a simple strategy. Feed search engines that facilitate locating this valuable content. Create content for your niche market. Grow a website that is information rich and visitors will come. It may take time but they will come.

Of course, there are ways that you can move process along a bit. The best way is to show search engines what your content is about and how important it is. This is done by building...

Quality Component #2: Niche links INTO your website

You may have heard of importance of getting other sites to link to yours. And yes, getting lots of links coming to your site is important. But QUALITY of those links is even more important.

I will not get into Google page rank or any other specific algorithms on any search engine. The fact is, NOBODY is privy to that specific information. But I can say for sure, based on experience, that quality of links coming to your site is VERY important.

When it comes to actual links, quality is measured primarily by these two factors...

[X] WHICH sites link to your site [X] Exactly HOW sites link to your site

The first one is toughest nut to crack. Getting quality sites to link to yours is not easy. Naturally, you need a quality site yourself. (More proof of my advice above.) Once you have a quality site in place, you can start getting links to it.

[X] Getting right sites to link to your site...

Building a link strategy at your website is an important step that will help you more than you realize, especially as time goes on. So make it one of first of your Internet marketing steps.

But getting links is not an easy task. In fact, getting quality sites to link to your site takes a bit of originality. You can't just slap up a "link to us" page and hope job gets done.

Below are two strategies I use. I invite you to emulate these strategies at your site...