Theories of exchanging links
One of the most important ways to get traffic to your site is to get other sites to link to you. Now this may sound easy but I can assure you it is not. Think about it. You must come up with a good reason why these already established websites should link to you. If your site is brand new, you will have a hard time convincing me that I should put a link on my site to yours. It seems everyone is in the “what’s in it for me “ mode. Granted this should not be overlooked as every link you put on your site is affecting your overall ranking to a point. But if you already run a site with visitors, you are telling them that you are in essence recommending this link to them. If this site is not up to your users standards, you may in fact end up hurting yourself and having that user not return. It is important to make sure external links are quality
New Sites getting links
So how do new sites get links? Well there is no easy answer. Most times webmasters already have other sites that they can put a link to the new site on. They put the link on the established website which most likely has Page Rank of 4 or higher to get this new site into Google quickly. But often, new webmasters are forced to beg or purchase links from webmasters. I do not recommend purchasing links.
Why should I not purchase links?
Search engines are at the top of their game. They are what power the web. I laugh when I hear people trying to come up with a scheme to circumvent the search engine spiders by selling text links. I think it is a dangerous game. First off, you have to post that the links are for sale. Who knows if a search engine or some spy for the company maybe grabs this? Yes it sounds highly unlikely but I would not put it past them. This is a billion dollar industry with very complex coding and probably the best coders in the world. Maybe they can somehow detect that your link is not genuine and purchased? I don’t know. But I have heard stories and would discourage it.
One way or reciprocal?
Debates have long been over one way vs. exchanging links. For some time, the notion of exchanging links has been perceived as a negative for both websites. Why? To a search engine this looks like a deal made between the two websites. You link to me and I will link to you. Makes sense right? While this may have bypassed search engine spiders in the past, it seems to be picked up now. One-way link exchanges are the best to get. It is like the other website is recommending you will no reward or payback. Now of course you could really be paying the webmaster for this link, which might already be known.
Optimizing Link Text
The link text is quite important to search engines. The link you provide should be whatever your main keyword is on your website. In a previous article, I used the example of an ice cream website. If you were trying to get links to this site, you may use something like Ice Cream Manufacturer. Remember your keyword should not be the most obvious or heavily searched keyword since you most likely cannot compete with huge companies and their ad budgets. Think small.
