Link Building - Basics of Link Building and 5 Methods II

2) You can trade inbound links to your web site. This is generally called reciprocal linking, and there are a number of web sites out there that are designed to help you find other webmasters with a similar niche to yours, and both of you can trade links. By trading links, I mean you put a link on your web site to theirs, and they do the same for you.

If you do this, be absolutely sure that you are not participating in any kind of web ring or link ring, where you agree to put a number of links on your site in exchange for a number of sites linking to yours.

Instead, arrange individual, one on one trades with other webmasters. I would recommend that in this case you trade only with webmasters who have websites pageranked at least at pr 3, although that may be a little more difficult when you are first getting started and you are ranked "0".

Another thing that is important is that you do not link to any web sites that are not pageranked at all or do not show in the search engines. If this is the case, either the web site is brand new, or they have possibly been banned by google. If they are banned by google, this will negatively impact you and your web site, and you could find you are also banned for linking to a banned site.

This is actually an important issue, and is the primary reason why I do not participate in any kind of reciprocal linking. You see, if you exchange, for example, 10 links today, and they are all fine links now, but in a few months perhaps some of them are banned by google, you could find you are also banned, and quite quickly.

So if you do any kind of reciprocal linking, I recommend you set things up in such a way that you can easily check the pageranks of each of the links at least monthly, and delete any outbound links on your site that are pageranked at 0.

To do this most effectively, set up specific reciprocal linking pages in your web site, and perhaps limit each page to 10 or 20 links. Perhaps set up a directory page going to each of the pages with 10 or 20 links each, so you can keep track of them. And then set up a reminder system to check all the links on each of these pages on a monthly basis.

This is of course not foolproof, and that is again why I do not do any kind of reciprocal linking. However, it is a powerful strategy, and so I have chosen not to omit it from this book just because I do not like it or use it.