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Basic Tools for your Link Generating Program
by Rick Hendershot, Linknet Power
Linking
Getting ready to start your Link Generating
Program
Before you start your link generating program, you
will need a few tools. These will help you get going in the correct direction,
right from the beginning.
First, you should get the Google Tool Bar. This will help you do
Google searches, see the Page Rank of possible link partners, and check on "back
links" of various pages. I will explain these things further in a future lesson.
For now, just download and install the Google Tool Bar.
Second, you may
want to get the Alexa
toolbar. One of the features of the toolbar is to give you what are called
"Alexa rankings". These are traffic rankings which are primarily based on
surfing stats derived from Alexa's installed base of toolbar users. Yes, it is
true that Alexa rankings are skewed towards Alexa users, and can be manipulated
by almost anyone caring to do it. Still, the Alexa ranking is becoming one of
the most important tools we webmasters have for watching the progress of our
sites as we develop and try to drive traffic to them.
Third, get a good
old-fashioned notebook and pen. As you begin your search for link partners you
will find yourself overwhelmed by all the possible candidates. You will stumble
on a beautifully rich list of relevant sites. Then you will follow one of those
links, and find another incredibly broad range of possibilities. Meanwhile, the
first list will be gone. The best advice is to make a note of possible link
partners as you come across them. When you see an interesting looking list of
prospects, write it down.
Create your link directory
The
fourth thing you should do is organize your own link directory — the one you
intend to create on your own site. You should not just lump all your links
together on one or two pages. Create some simple categories and spread them over
two or three pages. For some ideas on what categories might work for you, check
out a couple of your competitors, or look at one of the big online directories
(for example, Yahoo, DMOZ, Jayde),
although you may find this more confusing than useful.
A good rule of
thumb is to put only about 50 links on a given page. If you set as a target to
have between 100 and 200 links, that means you should end up with somewhere
between 2 and 4 pages in your link directory.
Create your link
text
And fifth, create your own link text — the text you're going to
ask your link partners to place on their site. Don't be shy about this.
Remember, a link is essentially a free advertisement on someone else's site
pointing back to yours. So give it some ad-like features. For starters, make
sure your "anchor text" includes your most important keyword. Google considers
this quite important. For example here is the text link I use for one of my
clients:
Free Card business card
displays
The Free Card business card display system is a unique small
business opportunity. Free Card displays are located in high traffic areas and
loaded with full color business cards on behalf of advertisers. Cards are
automatically dispensed to interested consumers.
Notice that the
anchor text is not simply "www.freecard.com" (the URL) or even FreeCard.com --
what some might consider the "site name") but rather a description of the
product, including the most important keyword, "business card displays".
Further, I have built more of this client's most important keywords into the
description accompanying the anchor text. This enhances the "relevance" of the
link page where your link appears.
Create more than one version of this
link text. A "long" one should be roughly 200 characters. A short one might be
less than 100 characters. Having two or three different versions and lengths of
your link text ready to go will make your life a lot easier when it comes to
actually exchanging links.
And now that we have all that out of the way,
in the next few lessons I will tell you how to actually go out and get those 100
valuable link partners.
In Lesson 5 we will discuss how to get inbound
links from online directories and link exchange sites.
Getting high quality links is a great way to
increase the Search Engine ranking of your website. For more information about
the linknet website promotion opportunity, go to
Linking Strategies.
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