There comes the time when someone with a website will want to exchange links with your website. You need to provide your link partner with the coding for your link (basic HTML) on their website. This is simple so do not head for the hills if you do not understand any HTML. By the way, do not wait for someone else to ask to exchange links. Start a linking campaign today and make it a regular task.
Say your name is Janet and you own a bicycle shop. You have found a link partner you wish to exchange links with.
Here are two examples of how to make a link you can send your link partner:
Example 1
<a href=”http://www.JanetsBicycles.com”>Children’s Bicycles</a> - Bikes for children, teens and adults. We also do repairs.
Blue characters are the template for the link. They are the same for all your links.
Black characters are your particulars. Alter them to make different links.
The above link will appear on their webpage as:
Children’s Bicycles – Bikes for children, teens and adults. We also do repairs.
Example 2
<a href=”http://www.JanetsBicycles.com”>Bicycle Repairs</a> - We repair and sell all types of bicycles and have been for 20 years. Free estimates.
The above link would appear on their webpage as:
Bicycle Repairs - We repair and sell all types of bicycles and have been for 20 years. Free estimates.
Notice how the blue characters are exactly the same for both examples and the black characters are the ones you change.
In both examples ‘JanetsBicycles.com’ is the name of the website.
In example 1 ‘Children’s Bicycles’ is the anchor text of the link.
In example 2 ‘Bicycle Repairs’ is the anchor text of the link.
Your anchor text should be one of your best keywords. In the above case ‘Children’s Bicycles’ and ‘Bicycle Repairs’ are two of Janet’s best keywords. It is better to use a good keyword for your anchor text as opposed to the business name. This will give your website HIGH QUALITY POINTS for that keyword and bring you much closer to (or help you get on) page one in searches involving it. Do not always use the same keywords as anchor text for all your links. Use your best four or five on different links.
Be sure to pay attention to detail when you make your link. Every letter, slash, period, colon, etc. needs to be correctly placed per the above examples.
Getting good, relevant websites to link to your website is an all important and never ending task if you have a website that expects to be taken seriously by Google, Bing and Yahoo. The number of links to your site (inbound links) is not nearly as important as having links from quality websites that are similar or at least semi-related to the theme of your website. Three good links are better than 200 garbage links hands down. The search engines can detect good, bad and non relevant links. You can have a few barely related links but do not overdue it. Bad links are useless and give no credit to your website in the eyes of Google while links from established, relevant sites with good page rank count for a lot. Bad links will also bring in no traffic.
Inbound links are the ones that give your website brownie points with Google, NOT outbound links. The logic of this is simple. Anyone can (from their own website) make an outbound link to The New York Times website or any other website for that matter, so it’s nothing special. But not everybody can get an inbound link from The New York Times.
Helpful Tips:
It is usually not a good idea to exchange links with direct competitors if both of you sell to the same market (if both businesses sell online goods or services nationwide or to the same local market).
For a small black business [3] operating in Houston for example, (electricians, salons, fitness centers/spas, dentists, car services/taxis/limos, roofers, physical therapists, etc.) an excellent way to get relevant links is to contact others in your trade that operate in a different part of the country.
Use your time trying to link with websites with a page rank of 2 or higher. You can link to lower ranked sites but let them find you.
Be sure to know which page your link will be located on your link partner’s site and its page rank. (an inside page’s rank is often different than that of the homepage)
Black entrepreneurs [4] can find out more information on how to get more traffic to their websites by using Local SEO [5] or National SEO at LowCostSEO.biz