It's wonderful when your customers appreciate you; it's even more wonderful when you can share that appreciation with others. After all, what gives you more credibility than a happy customer? And who better to spread word than that customer?

The word of day, then, is "Testimonial". Here are some tips and tricks to getting good testimonials and using them to your advantage.

1. If you get a compliment on your product or service, ask if you can get it in writing, preferably on their letterhead.

2. If you have what you feel is a good customer and you don't yet have a testimonial from them, ASK FOR ONE!

3. Regardless of how subject comes up, ask them some questions that will clarify benefit they enjoyed from your product or service.

4. Offer to put it in writing for them to save them time (and to word it way you feel is best). Naturally, you will ask them for approval of what you wrote and then, if appropriate, they can put it on their letterhead.

5. A good testimonial gives specific results; more specific better. For example, "Our productivity increased 35%" is much more powerful than "You saved us a lot of time".

Link popularity is becoming an increasing important criteria for better search engine ranking. So better your popularity, better your ranking. You may be thinking that you'll loose traffic to your website if you link to other websites. Sure, that can and will happen, but you should gain as many or more NEW visitors that you not have otherwise visited your site.

Keep in mind that in addition to more visitors via linking that another big benefit here is a potential increase in your websites' Search Engine positioning. As an online business owner you realize that their are a variety of advertising and web promotiontechniques you have available to you. Linking to other websites is a well know but little used tool that can produce significant traffic for your website as long as it is done properly.

Understanding how to link to other sites is as important as any advertising you do. The time and energy you put into developing links to your business can pay off for weeks, months, even years to come!

**First Rule of Linking**

"Know Thy Self" or at least know what you want to accomplish on line, whether it's selling products or services of your own or as an affiliate, distributing or disseminating information on Internet or even just having your own personal webpages.

Unfortunately what I see all of time are people who end up jumping around from one program, or provider or afiiliate program after other without any focus on what exactly they want to accomplish, other than make money online, etc.

Now, not later, is time to look into exactly what you want your website focus to be. Decide what primary category(s) your website will fit into and what secondary or peripheral sites will compliment it. Once you've decided your focus you'll be well on your way to using reciprocal linking strategies successfully.

**Second Rule of Linking**

"Know What Kind of Websites Will Compliment Yours". There's been a lot written about how to choose websites to link to. But I think one thing that can often be overlooked is fact that people all around world have diverse interests and although they may be looking for specific information, etc on one day doesn't eliminate them from clicking on a link to a website that is totally different from what they wanted to look at yesterday. They may not be targeted to your website but their interest brought them to you.

You would be surprised to find information you may be searching for on a website that compliments yours but does not directly compete with you. It happens all of time. This is where your list of primary and secondary categories for your website will help you decide what webmasters you want to contact to set a reciprocal link with.

**Third Rule of Linking"