How to get links to your site

One of the absolutely most important tasks you must do in order to promote your web site is to get other web sites to include links to your site. This is so important that it bears repeating: you MUST get links to your site on as many other web sites as you can.

Links on sites which have the same (or a similar) theme as your own are better than random links. Why? More targeted links means more targeted traffic. It also serves to build up the theme of your site for the search engines.

Be honest - If you enter your link campaign with the attitude that you are aiding interested people (and spiders) to find your resource, then you will do well. If you have more of a mercenary attitude or take a shotgun approach, then you may run into trouble with the search engines: they can drop your site for spamming if the abuse is too bad or obvious.

Use the Google Toolbar - Download and install the Google toolbar on your browser. Use this to determine the page rank (an estimation of the quality) of the sites to which you want to link. Higher numbers are better, zero is to be avoided.

Goals of Linking

Traffic directly from links - If incoming links are properly targeted, you can get some incredible traffic directly from them.

Targeted traffic - If your links are included on pages with a theme similar to your own site, then you will get traffic which is already interested in your topic. This traffic is often far superior to that from other means such as search engines.

Being found by search engines - Many search engine spiders constantly examine pages all over the internet. If they find a link to your site, they will add it to their index. The more (and better quality) links they find, the better.

Create links to your whole site - Don't forget that your site is more than the index page. In fact, the index page is relatively unimportant. So work to get links to as many different content pages as you can.

Looking For Links

Random link exchanges are worse than useless - Not all links are created equal. You want links that get the right people to your site, not just anyone. Remember bandwidth costs money (directly or indirectly), so you want to be sure it is used as usefully as possible.

Highly targeted links are best - Regardless of whether or not two sites exchange links, the best possible link is one that is themed the same as your site. Thus, if your site is about sewing, get your link on sites about sewing.

Find sites of a similar theme to your own - It's important to remember that the best links are links from sites of a similar theme to your own site. Thus, if your site is about homemaking, then you would be wise to get some links from other homemaking sites. You see, these sites tend to have visitors which are desirable to you: they are already surfing a site similar to yours and presumably would be interested in your site. 

Use Google and other search engines to search for similar themed sites - Enter your keywords and key phrases into Google and other search engines to find sites which fall under those search terms. Many of these sites are excellent targets for link exchanges.

Check those sites which link to you - Examine the sites which link to you for other possible link partners. Scan each of their link sections to find other sites of interest.

Check out who is linking to your competitors - Examine each of the sites which link to your competitors. Perhaps they would like to link to your site as well?

Examine the sites that are linking to you for other pages that might be of interest - If a site links to one of your pages, see if they might link to other pages on your site. You can make intelligent suggestions to the webmaster. After all, he may not have examined your site carefully and may not know you have other material.

What interests them?

Manually check out the web site - When asking for a link, be sure an manually look over their site before asking for a link. Never use automated software to do the job for you. When you write the webmaster to make a link exchange request, be sure and explain why it's to his or her advantage to include your link.

Offer value to their visitors - Why would these webmasters want to link to you? Because your site offers some value to their visitors, which tends to make visitors come back to their sites. You see, it's important to remember that quality links lead to repeat visitors, and you can use this information to get other webmasters to include your link on their page.

Remember your other pages - Remember you (presumably) have more than one page (the home page). Be sure and ask for links to the other pages in your site - these are often targeted better anyway and it may be easier to convince others to link to internal pages than the home page.

Theme - Make sure your link targets are well themed (this is stressed over and over in this article). In other words, if you site is about sewing, other sites about sewing will be interested in your link. Sites about graphics arts probably will not be.

Checking out the Sites

Check out your target sites - Before making a link exchange request, be sure you're target site meets some basic criteria. Do they have links to other sites at all? Is their site a quality site? Is the Page Rank (Google) higher than zero? See "linking criteria" (below) for more specific criteria.

Add Your Links Everywhere

Discussion lists - Cautiously add your link within on-topic discussion lists. For example, when I read a question on a discussion list that is answered by one of my articles, I may leave a link to the article as a reply. Be sure the rules of the discussion allow for this before you do it.

Guestbooks - Sign a few guestbooks each night, or at least a few a week if possible. Guestbooks are indexed by search engines, and they are read by a surprising number of people. At the very least, you will often get a visit from the guestbook owner checking out your site.

Chat rooms - Drop your link now and then in on-topic chats. You can become an "expert" answering questions in chat rooms and get quite a bit of traffic for only a small amount of time.

Newsgroups - Post a few articles to newsgroups now and then. Newsgroups are indexed by Google, and this is a way to get picked up by that search engine. Be sure your posts are on topic and follow the rules.

Ask questions - Ask lots of questions about your topic whenever given the opportunity, and be sure to leave a link to your site in your question. 

Send testimonials - If you liked a product or service, write up a quick testimonial and send it off to the owner, webmaster or company executive. They may very well add it to their web site along with a link back to your site.

DMOZ and Yahoo - Be sure to submit your site information to DMOZ and Yahoo. Don't pay for Yahoo unless you plan on making back some money, but do submit.

Signature line - Be sure and include your URL in the signature line of your email and your newsgroup reader.

Free stuff - If you give something away, be sure and get your site listed on "free stuff" sites. If you don't give something away, then make up something like an ebook, and give it away.

Themed directories - Add your site to every directory (in the proper place) that you can find which is the same them (or has a theme section) as you site. Use Beaucoup and Search Engine Guide to find lists of themed directories.

Regional directories - Don't forget the directories related to your state, country, city or region. These can generate lots of good traffic if well targeted.

Some very creative ideas

Interviews - Accept all interviews, and ask for a return link. This is not only a great way to get a link, but it adds to your perception as an expert.

Submit to awards programs - Be sure to submit your site to as many awards programs as you can. If you win, these will often include a link to your site on their winners page.

Start an awards program - Another great way to get links to your site. When someone wins, they display your award on their site along with a link back to your site.

Offer your domain name for sale - Place your domain name for sale for a ridiculous price at the many domain name resale sites. You may not sell it, but you will get some people checking it out to see why you expect to make so much money from the name.

Host your own webring - Install Ringlink on your site and host your own webring (or any number of webrings). Each person who adds the ring code to their site automatically adds links back to yours.

Write a review of a site - You can write up a review of a web site, then inform the site owner that you have done so (asking if he wants to change anything, add a picture and so on). Gently request a return link, and you will find that you almost always get one. Just be sure the review is "real" and heartfelt, and not just a ploy to get a link.

Host a discussion list - You can add a discussion list to your site and then invite other sites of a similar topic to link to it. This only works well for those discussion boards which are installed on your own server, because you want the links going to your domain, not the domain of some third-party hosted discussion board.

Create an ebook - If you have some articles, package them together in an ebook. Sprinkle your links throughout, then offer it as a free download, perhaps in return for something such as signing up for your newsletter.

Create lots of small sites with different domain names - Let's face it, these days domain names are cheap (less than ten bucks a year). So why not purchase a few, load it with a dozen pages which link to your other sites, and submit it all over the place? These smaller sites can get submitted to DMOZ and Yahoo separately, get their own page rank from Google, and offer other ways to get to your site. This works really well if you have your own server with it's own DNS. Just make sure each small site is stand-alone and offers value to it's visitors.

Linking criteria

Things to look for

1. Quality links scattered throughout a site.
2. Tightly themed and well organized link pages.
3. Good Google PR (higher than your own is highly preferable).

Things to look out for

1. Massive, unorganized link pages.
2. Topic of site not related to your own.

Immediate disqualifications

1. Page Rank (Google) of zero.
2. Obvious use of Zeus (unmodified Zeus link pages)
3. Amateurish pages
4. Any kind of Free-For-All page.
5. Any kind of Link Farm (LinkstoYou is an example of a link farm).

Loser linking ideas

The following ideas are not-so-hot for links. 

Hot sites - For some topics, such as graphics, hot sites are great ways to build traffic. However, I've found them to be expensive in bandwidth, easy to cheat, and virtually useless at creating volume targeted traffic.

Free-For-All lists - These are scripts which allow people to add links. Some automated list management is good, but those which allow automated posting are to be avoided at all costs. They are worthless wastes of time.

Any site with a Link Farm - Avoid linking to any site which has a link farm. These are cookie-cutter pages which look the same on every site, whose only purpose is to fool the search engines into thinking you have lots of links. Linking to these can drop your page rank significantly.

Banner exchange programs - Avoid theme like the plague. They use valuable real estate, provide little traffic and you do not get much control over what banners show on your site.

Exit exchange programs - The worst of the worst, avoid these programs as if they had bubonic plague and every other disease known to man. Surfers hate these things, the traffic is terrible and untargeted, and you have almost no control over what appears on your site.

Link exchange programs - Definitely avoid these at all costs. Linking TO one of these (or including the link pages on your own site) can get you banned from Google and other search engines.