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The Art Of Exchanging Links
By:
Published: February 12, 2007
Website owners invest a lot of time and money into planning and running a website. Everything is perfect, the site looks great, the product is top notch, but there's only one problem: no one is aware of the website's existence or location.
Most people running a website or small business in today's oversaturated ecommerce don't have the advertising budget to compete with corporate conglomerates. As a result, many websites fail due to lack of promotion. Thankfully, in the world of Internet integration, webmasters have the ability to reach out to customers with a variety of efficient marketing strategies.
One of the most popular marketing modes is the link exchange. Basically, a link exchange is an agreement between website owners to provide links to each other's pages. Free link exchange is common among websites sharing similar consumer bases or with smaller viewer bases. Web owners hope to take advantage of the overlap in their website's interests to attract new, prospective customers.
Link exchange is a friendly practice which often helps foster strong working relationships between websites that benefit from audience sharing. The downside is that websites will still to be locked down to the same group of users. Visitor traffic may grow marginally as each new link is added to the chain, but there's still a limit to how fast an audience will grow.
A few other options may provide an additional boost in traffic. One option is to join a link exchange network, which would put a site into a larger database of potential partners with whom to share advertising. There are a few drawbacks to this option. One is that the marketing is not nearly as focused as the more direct link exchange. Also, a website may get lost in the shuffle of other advertisers if the database uses some kind of automatic link exchange. This type of exchange is when the links are automatically dolled out within the system either by blocks of text ads or RSS feeds,
Finally, websites joining a network have no control over which websites may use their links. To avoid this, it is imperative for web owners to investigate the type of affiliates within a particular automated link exchange service or link exchange network. This will help to ensure that at least some of the affiliates match with a website's prospective customer base.
Link exchanges are also popular due to its positive effect on a website's ranking in the search engine result pages or SERP. Popular search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, put a great deal of emphasis on the number of pages that link to a website. A website's ranking in the SERP is dependent on the number of pages containing links to the website. A high number of page links results in a high ranking in the SERP.
The caveat to this is that larger companies have determined link exchanges to be an unfair practice in raising domain rankings. These companies have gone to great lengths to discredit what they judge as artificially inflated results.
Networks may avoid this by using a non-reciprocal link exchange. This disguises direct link exchanges by providing search engines with a link to a generic hub. This option circumvents the search engine's ability to detect direct link sharing. Whether this will work in the long term remains to be seen.
Link exchanges are an effective, inexpensive way to promote websites on the Internet. It is important for webmasters to conduct research in order to determine the best promotion strategy for their website. Proper planning and knowledge will go a long way to helping websites gain a foothold in the crowded e-business market.
Sources:
Link Exchange. Wikipedia. 11 Jan. 2007. 15 Jan. 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_exchange>.
"Link Exchange Directories." Infowizards. 14 Jan. 2007.
Link Exchange Network. Wikipedia.1 Jan. 2007. 15 Jan. 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_exchange_network >.
Webmaster-Talk.com. 2006. 14 Jan. 2006 < http://www.webmaster-talk.com/relevant-link-exchan ge-forum/>.
Most people running a website or small business in today's oversaturated ecommerce don't have the advertising budget to compete with corporate conglomerates. As a result, many websites fail due to lack of promotion. Thankfully, in the world of Internet integration, webmasters have the ability to reach out to customers with a variety of efficient marketing strategies.
One of the most popular marketing modes is the link exchange. Basically, a link exchange is an agreement between website owners to provide links to each other's pages. Free link exchange is common among websites sharing similar consumer bases or with smaller viewer bases. Web owners hope to take advantage of the overlap in their website's interests to attract new, prospective customers.
Link exchange is a friendly practice which often helps foster strong working relationships between websites that benefit from audience sharing. The downside is that websites will still to be locked down to the same group of users. Visitor traffic may grow marginally as each new link is added to the chain, but there's still a limit to how fast an audience will grow.
A few other options may provide an additional boost in traffic. One option is to join a link exchange network, which would put a site into a larger database of potential partners with whom to share advertising. There are a few drawbacks to this option. One is that the marketing is not nearly as focused as the more direct link exchange. Also, a website may get lost in the shuffle of other advertisers if the database uses some kind of automatic link exchange. This type of exchange is when the links are automatically dolled out within the system either by blocks of text ads or RSS feeds,
Finally, websites joining a network have no control over which websites may use their links. To avoid this, it is imperative for web owners to investigate the type of affiliates within a particular automated link exchange service or link exchange network. This will help to ensure that at least some of the affiliates match with a website's prospective customer base.
Link exchanges are also popular due to its positive effect on a website's ranking in the search engine result pages or SERP. Popular search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, put a great deal of emphasis on the number of pages that link to a website. A website's ranking in the SERP is dependent on the number of pages containing links to the website. A high number of page links results in a high ranking in the SERP.
The caveat to this is that larger companies have determined link exchanges to be an unfair practice in raising domain rankings. These companies have gone to great lengths to discredit what they judge as artificially inflated results.
Networks may avoid this by using a non-reciprocal link exchange. This disguises direct link exchanges by providing search engines with a link to a generic hub. This option circumvents the search engine's ability to detect direct link sharing. Whether this will work in the long term remains to be seen.
Link exchanges are an effective, inexpensive way to promote websites on the Internet. It is important for webmasters to conduct research in order to determine the best promotion strategy for their website. Proper planning and knowledge will go a long way to helping websites gain a foothold in the crowded e-business market.
Sources:
Link Exchange. Wikipedia. 11 Jan. 2007. 15 Jan. 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_exchange>.
"Link Exchange Directories." Infowizards. 14 Jan. 2007
Link Exchange Network. Wikipedia.1 Jan. 2007. 15 Jan. 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_exchange_network >.
Webmaster-Talk.com. 2006. 14 Jan. 2006 < http://www.webmaster-talk.com/relevant-link-exchan ge-forum/>.
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