I set up a separate page on my web site and call it a resource page. This is NOT a links page or a "My Favorite Links" page. This page provides external links to highly relevant resources for my visitors. Think of it as adding "free" content to your website that is contributed by best websites around.

Who Should You Link Out To? (Reverse Links)

"who should you link to" is a very serious question and one and will have a significant impact on your future search engine placements. When you link to other highly relevant, external, sites, you are telling Search Engines - "This site has highly appropriate content that compliments my site and it will add to my visitors overall enjoyment."

The potentially positive impact is so great there is a need for a number of considerations when determining which web site that you should link to. Factors that must be considered in making this determination are:

1) Is potential site's content related to your sites content? Just like a good incoming link strategy (sites linking to you), relevance of content found on both sites must be high. If you put a bunch of links from your site out to other websites which have completely unrelated content, value of these links will produce negligible results. Actually they will tend to rapidly reduce perceived value of your own site.

2) Are you trying to link to a competitor? Since we are linking "out" and we are not looking for a linking partner your ultimate interests must be considered. Do you really want to link to a site that provides same, or very similar, products and/or services as you provide? Unless that site is willing to reciprocate with a link and they have a higher PageRank than you do that is NOT a good idea!

3) What is PageRank of other website? The majority of people falsely believe that outbound links hurt your SE placement. Actually opposite is truth. Poor link-building is biggest cause of these misconceptions, not actual link. Always check PageRank assigned by Google when you are choosing whether to link to another site. Like boost a relevant link from a high PageRank site gives to your site in incoming links it can have a positive effect on your outbound (reverse) links. If all of your outbound links go to highly regarded sites (as seen by search engines) and their content is complimentary to your site then these links will definitely gain you higher rankings.

Finding Links

Everybody wants to draw visitors to their website. Many incoming links means many incoming paths for visitors; it may also boost your search engine ranking. But how do you get there?

A classic way of getting seen and noticed on web is to make sure your site is linked to as many other sites as possible. The strategy of link-exchange has been so overused and abused that search engines are now wary of it and may penalize sites that are linking to "link farms", or to any other sites with non-relevant content.

This is way it should be. We all want our web browsing experience to be smooth and pleasant. We don't want to get frustrated by stumbling over irrelevant content while following links between sites. On other hand, webmasters all want more traffic to their sites, and get frustrated when they don't get it. There are two types of benefits from having many links to your website:

- Get improved ranking by search engines - if you are popular, you are probably worth a visit

- People (not just search bots) actually follow links and find your site!

If done properly, link popularity improvement is an extremely important strategy to make your website successful. Broadly speaking, you can achieve this in a number of ways:

1. The classic link exchange (link swap) method; two webmasters agree to swap links

2. You pay to get incoming links from high-ranking websites

3. By writing articles and getting them posted on other websites; including a link to your own site

4. By getting your articles published in E-zines, with links back to your site

5. You participate in online forums, where a link to your site may be included with each post

6. You start a blog/RSS feed, and get it spread to many subscribers!

All these methods involve work, in varying amounts. Method #2. costs you money, rest may be essentially no-cost. Method #4. will probably not contribute to search engine ranking, but may give you droves of targeted visitors.