Creating a Link Strategy that Works Increase your web site's link popularity and search engine ranking dramatically through good quality optimization and links.

Reciprocal linking is the art of getting other websites to link to yours. Done properly, it's a powerful marketing tool that can improve your search engine rankings and bring you highly qualified traffic. If you can get enough websites to link to yours, it can help you greatly with what's known as "link popularity," which is one of the criteria used by most of the major search engines when ranking websites. Theoretically, the better your popularity,the higher you rank.

Your first step should be to set up a page on your site that will hold the link swaps you're going to arrange. Some people call these pages "links" or "fav links" or sometimes "related links."

What I hear from many site owners is "if I link out won't I be sending my traffic away?" The answer is yes... and no. When choosing sites to link to, choose related sites that complement what you do but don't directly compete with you -- instead of linking to your competitors.

A smart tip to keep in mind when adding these sites to your webpage is to set them up so they'll open in a new window. This way, your site will remain open in the background, making it easy for your visitors to return.

Now I'm not going to kid you about this: The hardest part in swapping links is finding the sites you wish to link to, contacting the webmaster, then adding the link. Even after all of this is said and done you'll still need to monitor the sites who've agreed to swap with you to make sure they're living up to their end of the bargain.

Gathering reciprocal links for your website is a powerful promotional tool that you should be utilizing in order to increase your traffic and improve your link popularity. By adding only relevant links that relate to your site's topic you'll also be adding an additional value for your visitors as well. Popularity was important in High School and on the Internet it's no different. If you use it to your advantage you'll be one of the most popular sites on the web in no time at all.....and that you can count on.

"Your success is our success."