Some web site owners have a fear of giving away their hard earned traffic to other sites by links out. With the right precautions, links to other sites can actually help you build more visitors without losing any traffic.

First we will look at how to find sites to exchange links with.Then how to ask for links and lastly how to protect your existing traffic.

a.  First stop- search engines, send an email to mailto:search@kimsal.com using any keyword or keyword phrase of your web site in the subject and a blank body and hit send. In a couple of minutes, check your email and you will have the URLs of the top 5 ranked sites across 5 major engines.

b.  Do this for 10 different phrases that your customer would use, but a slightly different market. If you specialize in home business on-line, then you could do a search for "home business accounting software" or "small business help" Combine these lists and you have a very targeted list of URLs to visit

c.  Visit the list and be sure they are a quality web site that you want to exchange links with. You are also looking for the name of each site owner so you address a letter personally to them You can also list your site at these places.
The Reciprocal Link Directory
     http://141Link.comAn easily searched directory of categorized sites that want to swap links. also
     http://www.exposepromotions.com/resources/reciprocaldirectory/

     http://www.reciprocallink.com/directory/

     http://www.iwr.com/free/reciprocal.htm

     http://www.fraternet.com/zel/

This last site is a free newsletter that will allow you to post once a month: Next the contact

1.  Compliment there site-eg. lay out, helpful, great source and give detail of something worthwhile deep in their site. Be genuine!

2.  Tell them why you are writing- A little basic, but you need to state your reason for mailing them.

3.  About your site -Tell them about your site stating that you cater to a similar market and why you could provide them with good information that would be helpful for his visitors.

4.   What type of links-eg. you could swap articles, text links, banners, or buttons

5.   Tell him you already have a link up at your site- give him the address of the page and make sure it is easy to see the link to his site

6.   Free- What you could provide for him or his site eg. software or service at a discount or a bonus.

Remember he does not want to lose a lot of traffic by giving away links out

To make it simple to place the links on your site download the free CGI script at
http://141link.com/free_cgi_script.htm

Ok you have got a couple of new links to your site and some out - a start! Now you need to make sure that you do not lose too much traffic to the links out

The box is easy to close and then lets them go on their way if they wish. When you receive a link to your site, ask what page it is on, then load that information into URLbase from
     http://www.envprogramming.com/urlbase/tradelinks.html

This nifty little piece of free software will tell you what links are on any page you specify without having to go to that site.

Ask them to link using a code like http://yoursite.com/?www.theresite.com so that you know how many of your visitors are coming from his site. If you don't have a tracking or service check out
     http://www.websitereporter.com as it tells you just about everything about your visitors.

As for any marketing, it will take some persistence and numbers to get the links. Some will bring you a little traffic some a lot, but it is passive traffic that you do not have to maintain, like a search engine ranking or pay for a banner program.

To subscribe Click on the link below and hit send mailto:home-profit-online@oaknetpub.com?subject=SUBCRIBE      http://141Link.com

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