My Knight in Shining Armor, Sire from Wassup Blog taught me a lesson about links while answering my questions about comments!
How fun is that?!
Sire simply answered the questions I left in the comments box under his posts on his blog. When he answered all my questions, I found that he had created a post linking me in! What a gift! I thought I’d give the gift back and recipcrocate the link!
If you don’t know about reciprocal links, read on!
Understanding Links:
Links are the words people click on to surf the Web. Technically, they are called “hyperlinks.” Links are what make the Web work, and are how we find sites. When someone says their site is “listed” in Google, for instance, it means that Google has a link to their site.
When you recommend another site, you put a link to it on your site so that others can visit it. When you submit your site to a directory such as Gimpsy or DMOZ, you are essentially requesting a link from them.
One-way link is a hyperlink that points to a website without any reciprocal link; also called Incoming Links or Inbound Links.
Two-Way-Linking (Link exchange, link swaps and link partners) is a Reciprocal link arranged when two web sites agree to link to each other to ensure mutual traffic.
Three way linking (site A-site B-site C-site A) is a special type of reciprocal linking. The attempt of this link-building method is to create more “natural” links in the eyes of search engines. The value of links, by three-way linking, can then be better than normal reciprocal links, which are usually done between only two domains.
Your goal in finding links, one-way, reciprocal, or Three way should always be relevancy.
Reciprocal links help you in two ways.
1. They increase your web site traffic.
2. They boost your rankings in search engines.
Warning: Late in 2005, Google’s Matt Cutts made it clear that it’s possible to “overdo” reciprocal links. Getting good, solid, reciprocal links should be part of your links strategy, not your total marketing strategy.
When ranking sites, the major search engines take into account the number and quality of the sites that link to you.
Persuading good quality, relevant sites to link to you can be tedious, time-consuming and frustrating. Here are some tips to increase your chances of success.
Search in major search engines such as Google and Yahoo to find sites which complement yours but are not direct competitors.
Many sites also link to direct competitors, figuring that the benefits outweigh any disadvantages.
Examine their links pages
A refinement of this strategy is to visit your competitors’ sites and complementary sites and examine their links pages or resources pages.
The sites you’ll find there are potential reciprocal links partners. They should be linking to you.
Now visit THEIR links pages and examine them, and so on down the chain.
You should end up with a long list of good sites with which to exchange links.
How to set up reciprocal links
Find GOOD QUALITY, complementary sites.
Place a link to them on your site.
Only AFTER you’ve placed a link to them, email the owner of the site a short, friendly note. Address him or her by name. (If the name isn’t on the site, you may be able to find it at DomainTools.com.) http://www.domaintools.com/
Genuinely praise something on the site. If you can’t find something worth praising, delete the site from your list.
Tell the web site owner you’ve linked to their site, giving them the URL of the page where you’ve place your link.
Ask for a link back to your site, suggesting a page where the link would be appropriate.
Three weeks later, if there’s been no reply, send a brief, polite reminder. It’s easy for emails to be lost or overlooked.
Use the phone and/or snail mail. A link from a good site is a very valuable thing. If you can’t get noticed by email, consider trying a phone call or
posting a letter. That’s more expensive but also more likely to attract the answer you want.
Keep an alphabetical record of sites you’ve linked to and requested links from. You need to know who you’ve contacted and who you haven’t.
Just a handful of new link friends would make a big difference for most websites. If your link popularity is increased, you’ll get more traffic to your website.
If you have a similar site to this one lindagraceonline.com and if you’re interested in sharing links, let me know in the comments below! I look forward to linking with you!!
I’m having a blast Linking in with Sire!
June 24th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Thanks Linda for the very informative post.
I remember before google reciprocal links was how we built traffic.
Peter Fuller MBA recently posted..Why I started my own Home Business
August 22nd, 2010 at 7:59 am
I’m learning so many things! I have recently learned from Sire at http://wassupblog.com the ease and importance of comments that lead to links! Stuff you already know, I’m sure! Sire will comment back whenever you leave a comment on his blog!
June 24th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Hi Linda
You’ve provided some terrific tips on setting up reciprocal links in this post.
I completely agree with you that you should make the effort to contact the website owner. There will always be some people who won’t bother communicating directly with others, but if you take the time to extend your hand to that person, they are more likely to take notice and hopefully, reciprocate.
… building relationships takes time, but is worth it (I think, anyway!).
The fourth point (… If you can’t find something worth praising, delete the site from your list) is also great advice. If you can’t find something appealing about it, chances are, others won’t either!
I have to get my Tribe Blogroll happening on my blog, just as you have done here! I’ll let you know when it’s done.
~ Kylie ~
Kylie Doak recently posted..How to Migrate (Export and Import) Posts and Comments Files From One WordPress Blog to Another
June 24th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Reciprocal links are easy to overlook when preparing a post. This is an excellent reminder to constantly be on the lookout for people you can connect with (although the lists you sited are good to use too). Can’t wait to try three-way linking. Let’s use it right away, okay?
Darlene Davis recently posted..Green Dumbbells & A Major Commitment
June 25th, 2010 at 6:06 am
Yes Darlene, lets!
June 25th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Linkbuilding is a very important part of increasing traffic to one’s site, and like everything else there’s an art to it. You’ve outlined some very good points for the basics to linkbuilding. Thanks!
August 22nd, 2010 at 8:43 am
You’re so right Dewane! I’m learning more every day! Sire from http://wassupblog.com is teaching me every time I comment on his blog, today it was with a backlink! I’m learning! You left 3 comments on my posts in June and I never commented back! It will be fun to see where it goes from here!
August 22nd, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Yes Dewane, now that we can see the benefit to link building, we need to make it happen!
June 25th, 2010 at 11:49 am
Linda,
So glad you posted this info about links. I wasn’t quite sure of all the diffrent ways this can be accomplished before reading your post. thanks so much for sharing this cool information!
Good posting with your 30 day challenge
Val
June 25th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Linda,
Thanks for writing this post , i find the information that you have shared of great value to the people that i connect with and going to pass this on to my tribe. I look forward to reading more from you.
Chris
Chris Bernardo recently posted..Taking a Detour got me a FREE Iphone4
June 26th, 2010 at 4:50 am
Wow Linda,
what a brilliant post. You’ve given very detailed information and instructions on a very useful topic.
Many will benefit from this.
Thanks for sharing.
Cheers
Toni
Toni King recently posted..Promote Yourself And Share What You Do
August 22nd, 2010 at 8:04 am
I’m learning so much more! Sire from http://wassupblog.com has taught me the value of comments and how they lead to backlinks! You probably already know all of this, but check it out! Sire will comment back on all your comments!
August 17th, 2011 at 4:04 am
The art of link building seems to me to be a very delicate balance of understanding search engine mechanics, and not being obnoxious by being a spammer. I guess the key here, from all of my research is to try to make it seem that your link building is happening in a natural fashion. I think you just have to have to courage to ask for a reciprocal link. All you have to do is ask. What’s the worst that can happen?
Glad recently posted..Healthmaster Reviews – Are They Really Correct?
August 17th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Glad,
Isn’t that what CommentLuv is all about? Now the question is, do you have a blog that is more than a sales page? I’d love to post a comment there if you do!
Linda
August 17th, 2011 at 11:28 pm
I’ve never heard of reciprocal links before, this is my first time reading about it. I know that backlinking is very important to drive traffic to your blog/site, but this is something different.
Do you have any sources about this one aside from http://wassupblog.com? I’d like to learn as much information as I can. Thanks for this great post, Linda.
Heather Brown recently posted..Winter Feeds for Sheep
August 22nd, 2011 at 8:43 pm
Heather,
I am sorry to say that I’m not sure if Sire has a post about link exchange, I haven’t specialized in it either. I’ve simply worked with my online friends and we’ve linked to each others blog posts! This entire online networking has so much to learn!!!
Linda
October 12th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
Reciprocal linking a few years ago was a great way of conquering Google, but these days you need one way links to. I’ve had quite a lot of success with article marketing and a couple of blog networks, but whatever method you use, its time consuming, the trick is to vary the sources of your links and stick with it, however tedius it gets, and that includes all the attempts at reciprocal linking that don’t get reciprocated!
October 13th, 2011 at 9:31 am
Richard,
Thanks for taking the time to comment~ it’s funny that you talk about article marketing. I just started article marketing (except a few on Ezine) yesterday! I’m curious why you don’t have commentluv or a Gravatar~
Linda