1. What is link popularity?
2. A few good reasons to link
3. Linking strategy
4. How-To ask
5. Conclusion
Link popularity is the number of links you have from other web sites to yours. Getting other sites to link to yours isn't a whimsically "Hey, link to my site and I'll link to yours". Creating link popularity takes time, patience, and planning. A well-planed strategy devised ahead of time can increase traffic to your site tremendously.
Consider this, if you have links from 100 other sites that each average 1500 visitors a month, and say only 2% of the visitors from each site visits your site, that's 3000 visitors to your site! Keep in mind, less than a hundred links from popular or high ranked sites are worth more than links from a 1000 low-ranked sites; so plan and choose carefully.
Here are a few more good reasons to have other sites link to yours:
There are several steps to planning your linking strategy. In brief, here is what you should do. Find out who is already linking to your site; research those sites that you would like to link to your site. Collect pertinent information about those sites and catalogue them in a database.
Create a schedule that involves researching new sites, writing follow-up E-mails, and maintaining your database. Stick to your schedule and don't give up if results seem slow at first. Plan your strategy for at least a year. Below are the above steps in more detail:
1. Visit http://www.linkpopularity.com, type in your URL to find out who is linking to your site. Type in the URL of your competitors site; sites linking to your competitors might be willing to link to yours.
2. Go to several search engines and type in keywords related to your target market. Research the top sites that come up in the search. Consider sites similar to yours not as competitors but as opportunities. Perhaps, your site can offer a newsletter or online articles that may be of interest to their visitors.
Your goal is to collect information about the web site that you can use to write personal emails addressed to the web sites owner. A personal email is professional and more effective than one that says "link to me and I'll link to yours". A well-written email is more likely to be read and a link back to your site granted. Make it a point to find out the webmasters name.
Make a note of something positive or interesting about the site that you can mention in your personal email. Below is a list of information you need to gather, at a bare minimum:
3. Categorize your list of prospects into to three lists or categories such as High, Medium, and Low priority or traffic volume, or Gold, Silver, and Bronze sites; rank them in a way that is meaningful to you. Your High list should include sites that generally have a large volume of traffic to their web site, or are sites that you really want to have a link on.
This list may also include your biggest competitors. Your Medium traffic list should include sites (large or small), not on you’re High traffic list and that are related to your market niche. These sites generally do not have as much traffic as your High traffic sites but are equally important. Your Low traffic list consists of little "less traveled" sites that potentially could generate traffic to your site.
4. Create a database using Microsoft Access (if you own it) or a simple table in a word processor is good enough to organize your lists. Enter all the information you gathered in steps 2 and 3. You want to be able to easily lookup and track who you have sent E-mails to, who has replied to you.
You will want to determine if you need to send a follow up email or maybe a thank you. Most important, what sites have linked to yours.
5. Create links to your prospect's web site that are on your High priority list, on your site before you send them a personal E-mail. Show them that you value their site whether they link to your site or not.
Here is how to ask. Create a template letter that will speedup your letter writing process. Leave blanks in your template that you can fill in later with personalized information. Ensure that you included a positive comment about their web site, when you visited their site, a brief description of who you are and why you’re E-mailing them. Include details on how a link to your page can benefit their visitors and how their web site relates to yours.
Indicate where on their web site your link might benefit their clients. Make it very easy for them to link to your site, that is, provide the HTML code for your link that they can "Copy and Paste" from your E-mail to their web page.
Create a schedule and stick to it. Set aside 15, 20 minutes, an hour or two a day for surfing/researching links and letter writing. Only you can decide what is right for you; what ever you decide, commit yourself to it. Sending E-mails to the people on your Medium or Low lists first. Do this until you have refined your letter and process. When you think you are ready, start sending E-mails to the people on your High list. Spend a little more time on personalizing these letters.
Send follow up letters to those sites that you really want a
link from and that haven't responded or rejected your initial
letter. Be persistent in your follow up letter. Show them how a
link is mutually beneficial to both of you. Indicate that
visitors to their site will probably like the extra information
on their site. Inform them that your market research shows that
visitors to your site have an interest in their product or
service; show them that your site can send business their way.
Some tools and resource you might want to consider are Link
Popularity software. These programs can check AltaVista, Hotbot,
and Infoseek to see how many sites are linked to yours. You can
find out what sites are linked to yours and your competitors.
Alexa is a free navigation software service that indicates
various information about the sites you visit.
It reports on the amount of traffic the web site receives, the
ranking of the web site, contact information and other useful
statistics.
Other strategies for linking are to start an affiliate program.
With an affiliate program you can have thousands of people link
and promote your site. It doesn't cost anything until a sale is
made. Links created by an affiliate program increase Link
Popularity tremendously and may create a top search engine
ranking.
Now you have a plan, It's time to execute it. Some things to
remember while executing your killer linking plans are: only
offer reciprocal links to those sites on your High traffic list.
Having to many may lure visitors away. Offering a link to another
site is a recommendation, only link to sites that will add value
to your own.
Web surfers usually go to search engines to find web sites and not free for all link pages. With free for all link pages, your link will most likely be lost in depth of these pages. In addition spammers can take advantage of these pages, sending junk mail to these sites; so save yourself from some junk mail, avoid these sites.
If you want to learn more about how to set up and implement a linking strategy to drive huge traffic to your site, please consider our How-To Internet Marketing Course. We do into extensive detail in a step-by-step approach: Please click here for more information