Trading reciprocal links with websites that have content related to yours is a great way to promote your website and get more targeted traffic coming in.
Although it's not as effective as it once was, exchanging links can also help your websites Google PageRank and therefore move you higher up in the SERPS.
The better the PageRank is on the page that links to your site, the better it is for your Google Page Rank and the higher your Page Rank, the more traffic your website will get. Therefore, a reciprocal link exchange is an important internet marketing strategy you can implement.
Tips For A Successful Link Exchange Campaign:
Create a Recommended Links Page on your website. Place a link to the sites that reciprocal link back to your website. When you contact the other webmaster about a link trade, provide clear instructions on how they should link to your photography website. Be sure to include the exact HTML code you want your link partner to use. You can send them to your home page or deep link. to a specific page within your website. If they allow you to pick your link text (the words visitors actually click on), use the top keywords from your web page.
How can you tell what a pages Google PageRank is? Google has a PageRank display built into the Google tool bar. If you want to see the PageRank of a website, Absolutely Free! The Google tool bar is a necessary addition to your website building tool bag. It will display the Page Rank of every page you visit. Page Rank is Google's way of telling you if a page is important.
Perform a search for your target keywords on Google (the words you think people will use to find sites like yours).
Click on each of the results and see if the website:
Has a page related to the topic of your site and has a good Page Rank, if so they're a good prospect for a Reciprocal Link Exchange.
Is complementary (non-competitive) with your site
Has a good Page Rank
Has a links page. If it looks good put it on your list of websites to exchange links with.
Now, write to the webmasters of the selected sites and ask them for a reciprocal link exchange, following these guidelines:
Place a link to them on your own site before contacting them.
Start your email or letter by describing your website, how does it relate to theirs, and how both would benefit from the exchange.
Provide the URL of your Recommended Links page, that way they can see the link to their website from yours and verify that their link information is valid. Also seeing their link on your site will make it more likely they'll exchange a reciprocal link.
If they want to exchange reciprocal links:
Send them the exact HTML code that they should use to link to you.
Make sure to specify your main keywords in the link text which will help your SERPS (search engine results position) For example, if your photography website is called Pams Wedding Photography, and your main keywords are "Phoenix wedding photographer", it is better to make the link text "Pam's Photography- Phoenix Wedding Photographer" instead of just Pam's Photography.
Write down the name of each potential site, the email address of their webmaster, the URL of their links page, the date you emailed them and the date when they put the link to your website. If you don't see the recipocal link after a couple of weeks, send them a nice reminder. If you don't hear from them or see no link to your website in another week, remove the link you placed on your site to them.
Another way to find suitable reciprocal link partners is by finding out who is linking to your competitors. You can and navigate to your competitors website then click on the "i" to the right of the web pages Page Rank, then click on backward links from the drop down menu. You will get a partial list of sites that link to your competitors web page. Write to the webmasters of those sites and ask for a link.
If you have more than one website project, you can get creative and do a 3-way link exchange, which may be even more effective for SEO than a direct reciprocal exchange. To do a 3-way link exchange, you would link to the other webmasters website from your site, and they in return link to your blog or other website of yours. This avoids a direct link exchange between two websites and is even more desirable.
