It is common knowledge that inbound links to your site are very important. Reciprocal and inbound linking will bring you a great deal of traffic apart from search engines. As it was already mentioned it can also greatly influence your ranking although the weight of reciprocal and inbound links is somewhat different.

Inbound, non-reciprocal links are most profitable and at the same time the most difficult to obtain. Non-reciprocal links have some advantages when comparing with reciprocal links: they have bigger weight for search engines and one more thing – you don’t have to monitor them as carefully as reciprocal links (webmasters could probably use such black-hat techniques as attempts to hide your link from search engines).

So the question comes up – how to get them? The first and the most perfect way is to write a unique, really valuable content. You’ll be surprised when some webmaster links to you just because you provide useful or interesting information. A high-quality and regularly updated site will naturally be linked to.

Another method is via directory listing. It is easier to get inbound links from directories but it will cost some money. Of course it is nice to have links from first-level directories such as Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Yahoo! Directory offers guaranteed review in 7 days just for $299 and with DMOZ one waits for months to be listed (if a voluntary editor doesn’t reject your site). For this approach there are a lot of other secondary and topic-specific directories. Moreover, topic-specific directories may be even more valuable as the links they provide are relevant.

One more way is to write an article and then publish it. It is very time consuming as you have to write it, optimize it (a well optimized article gives more weight to targeted keywords as it is absolutely relevant and thus raises the weight of the link) and finding a site to submit to. It is, however, worth it despite all these difficulties as articles provide valuable and entirely relevant links, moreover it can bring highly targeted traffic.

If your budget allows, buy some links on related sites. When doing so consider whether you aim to quantity or quality. Links from sites with a low rank won’t bring any considerable profit and sites with a high rank will cost a lot.

Another tactics is to create press releases. Most press release Web services allow users to subscribe to subjects they are interested in. There is a nice chance that your press release will be brought to a potential client. The service is hardly free but it will be cheaper than paid links (for press release writing tips visit http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2005/mar/25.html).

Link exchange is also important because it helps to improve link popularity and also the PageRank. The best thing about the link exchange is getting a lot of links pointing to your site. As a result, this will improve your PR, link popularity, and possibly your traffic. That’s why building solid link popularity should become one of the daily tasks of your SEO campaign.

Reciprocal links are not as bad as some people think. If link exchanges are made between sites sharing similar themes and topics, the exchange is beneficial to both sites – these are the best types of reciprocal links to seek out. You should try to avoid exchanging links with sites that are not relevant to the themes and topics of your site.

Link Exchange with a site which has a lower PR will not harm your PR and will be beneficial for both sides if the content is interrelated. Each page sends to the other the amount of PageRank that is available for transfer. Lower-PR pages do not cut down the receiving page’s PageRank, rather they enhance it, but to a lower extent, and that’s all. Over time, their available PageRank may also increase.

However, not everybody out there is aware of this fact. Often webmasters fall under the false conviction that if they exchange links with a low-PR site, their PR will be hurt. You may run into difficulty with other sites that believe this and don’t want to exchange links with your new site because your pages show a PR of 0. If you do encounter this situation, either focus on exchanging links with other new sites or ignore link exchanges for now and concentrate on the other linking methods described earlier. Once your PR increases, you can come back to pursuing link exchanges.

Preparing for link exchange

The first step is to create a link directory within your site to organize your outbound links. When creating the directory, if applicable use the same template used for other pages of your site. Make sure not to place more than 30 links on one page of your directory. Instead, split your directory into several pages; otherwise, it may be considered a link farm by search engines. This could affect your rankings and webmasters that are aware of the issue will not want to exchange links.

Second, compile a list of potential link partners. Do a search on your targeted keywords in targeted search engines like Google. See which pages are ranking high. Consider if it’s possible to get a link from these top sites. For instance, if the number one site in the Yahoo! Directory is Adobe or Microsoft, you’ll have little chance of securing a link. For sites that do seem like viable candidates, check to see if they meet the following criteria:

1. The content must be relevant to yours.
2. They must be open for link exchange possibilities. For instance, you see other sites’ banners or links posted or you find the site has its own link directory.
3. They must correspond to your requirements in terms of PageRank (not obligatory) and traffic rank (much more important). You can measure the traffic rank of the site with the help of Alexa toolbar (www.alexa.com) and PR with the help of Google toolbar. If a site has a lot of traffic, it is likely a valuable source of traffic for you.
4. The webmaster’s or other contact’s e-mail address must be available to send your link exchange proposition.

Another place to look for related sites is directories. Go to directories like Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ or the many smaller directories found on the Web to find categories related to your topic and keywords. Web sites listed under these directories may be suitable candidates for link exchange since the directory listing will give them a boost and they’ll have already been listed and ranked with search engines.

Yet another place to look for potential link partners is the lists of sites that link to your competitors or to sites ranked high for your keywords. Such lists may be made up with the help of Web CEO’s Link Analyzer by using the “Who links to me” analysis of your competitor’s page or other high ranking, a keyword related page or Web CEO’s special tool called Partner Finder.

Performing the link exchange

Before you start e-mailing with webmasters of potential link exchange sites, make sure to first include links to them in your link directory to demonstrate that you’ve already favored the site with a link. Place links to the most important or prestigious sites on your home page.

Then, create a outreach mail template to send to webmasters. You should, of course, personalize each email as much as possible before sending it. There are many so-called “link exchange” software programs available that will automatically mail to hundreds of webmasters by substituting their names and emails into the template. In our opinion this software nullifies the benefits of exchanging links. You will probably need to deal with most of your messages being returned for manual confirmation by the webmaster’s spam filter, and most webmasters are able to recognize a template generated email. Just as you are unlikely to value a link exchange proposition from someone that hasn’t even visited your site, other webmasters won’t either.

That’s why we stand for manually visiting each partner’s site and personalizing messages. Web CEO offers an easy and handy e-mail preferences tab and other services to manage correspondence with potential partners in a Partner Finder tool. Configure e-mail preferences so that the program will know how to correspond with potential link partners. The Partner Finder tool enables the creation of one or several message templates. Overall, it definitely lightens up the workload for manual and personalized correspondence.