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The Art of Networking: Section Two - Link Exchanges
by Rebecca Kemp

After discussing and understanding banner exchanges, link exchanges will be a piece of cake to you! A link exchange is simply placing someone else's URL on your site and they place your URL on their site. Sounds easy and it is, mostly.

You should always ask for link exchanges. It's an on-going process that never really ends. There is some Net etiquette or "Netiquette" that should be followed, though. It is much easier to get someone to link to your site if you already have their link on your site. You should send them an e-mail that goes something like this:

Hi!

I found your cool site while doing a bit of surfing. I really liked it, so I added your link to my site at http://www.mysite.com/links.html.
I was hoping if you wouldn't mind reciprocating by placing my link on your page. You don't have to, but I sure would appreciate it.
Here is my link http://www.mysite.com/. Check it out and see what you think.
I enjoyed my visit to your site and I'll be sure to return very soon!

Thanks!
Sincerely,
Me

Note that you're telling them that you have placed their link on a links page. You should put all reciprocal links on a special page like that. You don't want reciprocal links on your main page because you wouldn't want anyone to leave your site when they just got there! Also, your links page could become quite large so you wouldn't want so many links cluttering up your main page.

One thing you certainly should do is make it perfectly clear that you want to exchange links with other people. You should have easy to find and clearly marked link or button to a page with instructions on how to add your link to someone else's page. On this page should be a couple options on how someone could link to your site. Offer them a text version and then perhaps a couple of buttons or banners to choose from. Typing in the html code in a format that can be copy and pasted easily into a web page is often helpful as well.

Link exchanges are very important for two reasons. The first is the more times your URL is on someone else's site, the higher your ranking in certain search engines will be. This is called Site Popularity. You are considered a popular site if your URL is located by a search engine in many, many places on the Web. Search Engines like Altavista and Excite rank web pages by how popular the site it. If your site is popular, you site should be found at least on the first three pages of the search results. The second reason you should have a healthy list of links is you are providing a valuable service to your visitors. Your site now has some worth in the eyes of the visitor, if not for your content. Any reason you can get visitors to become repeat visitors is a good thing.

Sometimes managing your links can become unmanageable. It's a lot of work to have to type in a hyperlink, text descriptions and even banners or images hundreds of times, then send out an e-mail request for the exchange part. Then you have to check up on the people that have linked you to see if they actually did link to you!

One way I have circumvented a lot of hassle was to download and install a great links manager program called Links v2.0 by Gossamer Threads at http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/links/index.htm. This program is a free CGI based program that you upload and run from your own server, so if you have a free site like Geocities, this program won't work for you. (Yet another reason to dump those free sites and get a domain name of your own!) Links v2.0 is also not for Internet newbies or for those people new at web design and Perl coding. There are forums available with lots of people ready to help you, though.

With some customization, you can implement a links program at your web site where a visitor can enter in their own information. They submit their web page title, URL, description, a link category, name and e-mail right from your web site. An e-mail alert is sent to you so you can check their entry. Then with the press of a button, you can add their link to your web site automatically. The program automatically generated the link pages and the link. You don't have to upload new entries and you can customize the pages to look just like the rest of your site.

Other great features include the ability to contact your link exchanges via e-mail. Links owners can even modify their entries if they move their page, change their e-mail address or any other aspect of their link. Visitors can rate the linked site by voting on a scale of 1 to 10. Ranks and votes are then displayed next to each link. This will let other people know if the site is worth visiting. There are so many great features to this program that I could fill this whole chapter with it. You will just have to go check it out for yourself.

Finally, an alternative to Links v2.0 is to get one of those free-for-all link programs that run from another hosts site, rather than your own. A pretty good one that you can get for free is located at Bravenet at http://www.bravenet.com/samples/freelink.php (Bravenet has a lot of other great free features, too.) People can submit a link at your site, press a button and viola', the link appears on a link page. The only drawback is your stuck with a banner at the top of the page and you can only customize the page to look like yours just so much. All in all, it's a good links manager and you can use it even if you have a free site like Geocities.

Go To: Section Three - Chats, Forums and E-Groups

 

 
This article was reprinted with permission from Rebecca Kemp.

Please visit her sites at:


 
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