Your Linking Strategy - Free Traffic From Reciprocal Links

It's often said the best things in life are free and some of the best traffic you can get will be directly from other peoples websites that fit your target visitor, but aren't necessarily direct competitors.

Of course there is a price to be paid in terms of your time to research possible linking partners when developing your linking strategy. Then you have to approach them in the correct way and of course, should they agree you'll have to place a link on your website back to theirs in return for them placing a link to yours, but it's one of the most profitable uses of your time you'll ever use if you get it right.

The key to getting people to link to you is to do your research first! That means surfing the web and checking out other peoples websites who are operating in the same or a similar niche market to yourself. Before contacting the owner, you'll want to collect the following details and be complimentary in your approach - either by email or preferably by fax - and make it known you're showing an interest in their business. That means you'll need the following details.

	The websites main url.
	The url of the page you would like a link on.
	The website owners name, email address & fax number if possible.
	A note of the date you visited the website.
	Some brief details about the website (note something you like).

Now besides the obvious need to thoroughly scour the search engines, here are some free tools to help you keep your research time to a minimum:

Linking strategy from Alexa

Alexa is free software that integrates with your web browser and gives you a good indication of the amount of traffic a particular website receives. Alexa also often lists the websites owners details and you will often find their fax number here and the number of links they already have pointing to them. Obviously if they have a lot of incoming links, they are likely receptive to such requests.

http://www.copernic.com

Enter your keywords and copernic will go out and search all the main search engines at the same time. This is a great time saver and saves you jumping around from one search engine to another. Copernic have a free version of the software that takes a few minutes to download and install.

http://www.betterwhois.com

Use this domain name lookup service to locate the webmasters name and contact details if it's not listed on Alexa.

Now, here is a useful tool! If you want to know how you are doing in the link wars, or how you are doing compared to your competition, or even just how your competitors are doing, add the url in the form below and then press the 'GO' button below. You will be asked to enter a code (from the page where you are taken to) before you get your report. But, it is free, and very useful.

I have said it before and I'll say it again! Online everything comes down to spending time or spending money.

If you're too lazy or simply have too much to do to spend hours searching for possible linking partners yourself, then there's now an alternative service called "Zeus".

People are raving about this service that completely automates the process of locating potential linking partners that would fit the profile of visitors you would like to attract.

Not only do reciprocal links generate good quality traffic from your partner sites, it's now thought to be possibly the single most important factor used by the major search engines when ranking your website. It has to do with what is known as "Link Popularity".

Confused about link popularity?

You can download a free course explaining exactly how you will benefit by making good use of what is fast becoming one of the last effective free advertising methods available.

There is an up to date news desk on the subject of reciprocal linking here as well. It is an excellent linking strategy resource because it is updated daily.