Creating a reciprocal linking campaign

Reciprocal links are one of the most effective ways to promote a website and increase traffic to it. All search engines place great importance on “Link Popularity” that is the sites that have the highest number of incoming links rank the highest in the Google search results. Getting other sites to link back to yours is important to attain a top ranking in Google.

The way to get other sites to link to you is to create a “Reciprocal Linking Campaign”. Getting websites to link to your own websites is not necessarily the easiest task. Newer websites might be inclined to link to yours but it is harder to get links from larger well established websites. Also, one has to be careful with exactly what kind of website one is exchanging links with. Many websites out there have been black listed by the search engines, there are link farms and websites which offer free for all links pages, linking to any of these pages could be harmful to your own website.

The simplest and most basic way to get started on a reciprocal linking campaign is to look for sites that are in the general topic area as your site, but not a direct competitor, create such a list and place links to their websites on your own and then email the webmasters of the sites requesting a link exchange.

A question you might have is how and where does one find a list of websites related to your field. One way to find out is to enter they keywords related to your own website into a search engine like Google, the responses will list relevant websites which you can contact for link exchanges.

A good idea here is to never copy and paste the same email to all the webmasters. Webmasters like to see personalized emails where it is apparent that the webmaster has actually visited the website and has emailed in because he is genuinely interested in his website, not just because he wants a link exchange. The email to the webmaster should express interest in a link exchange mentioning why you think a link exchange would be beneficial to both parties and ofcourse some evidence that you have indeed browsed through the website.

A letter approaching the webmaster of a site should be made as personal as possible, if possible address the webmaster by his name. Be sure to include the link exchange information in your email including the title of your website, a short description and the page where you would like to see your link placed. Also, mention the URL where you have already placed a link.

Very soon after sending out your emails you will receive responses from the webmasters. Beware, not all of them will be positive, this is natural and one should not be discouraged by link exchange offers being turned down. If you are lucky, you will receive many positive responses to your offer. At this stage, make sure to visit the website and see for yourself where the link to your website has been placed. Make sure it is on a page that is accessible by regular visitors and that it is clearly visible.

It is good practice to send a Thank You email to those webmasters who have accepted your offer for a link exchange. If you do not find a link to your website, email the webmaster and if you do not receive a response within a few days you may take off the link.

This is the basic way to start a link exchange campaign. It is also the most effective. It is important to be patient and wait for the benefits of your campaign to come through. Being persistent and consistent in your campaign will bring benefits in the long run and before you know it you will have more links than you thought possible.