Identifying or Locating Good Link Partners

Submitted by kosmos on Mon, 05/12/2008 - 15:34

Identifying or Locating Good Link Partners

If you just can't afford to hire a professional SEO firm or would rather learn how to manage your own link trades then here are a few tips to keep in mind.

1) Always look for sites with complimentary content and link directories with good themed titled pages related to your site. Having your link added to a page with a variety of companies from Casino's to technology when your in health care doesn't add much weight for that reciprocal links page. If you're in the health field then make sure the page is titled Health Resources etc and not generically titled Links etc. Also look on top of your web browser to make sure there is a unique browser title for each page. If all pages have the same title then these links pages are worthless too.

2) Download the Google Toolbar at: http://www.toolbar.google.com/

With the Google toolbar downloaded go into options and enable, "PAGE RANK' and 'PAGE INFO'

When evaluating a potential link partner view the PAGE RANK of their links page and compare it to yours. The higher the page rank (0 -10) the higher the reciprocal referral. Zero being the lowest and the site or page is either brand new or possibly banned. For more information please read my article on being banned from Google

Some webmasters will hide their links pages from being indexed and thus provide a worthless referral to your site. The site may have dozens of pages with high Google Page ranks but why are the links pages at ZERO?

When viewing ZERO Page rank links pages that your link is placed on click on the Google Toolbar 'Page Info' icon and choose 'Cached Snapshot of Page.' If the page isn't even cached by Google yet then that should be a red flag. If it is cached then look to see if they are hiding your link text in any way by taking it a step further and view the 'Cached Text Only' at the top of the page. If you notice their links are hidden with images or java etc then just move on. Obviously this type of link partner is trying to fool his link partners and is not interested in providing a quality reciprocal link in return.

3) Manage your links with quality links management software. http://www.123linksmanager.com offers easily managed one way, two way and three way linking opportunities. You can manage multiple sites at once, view rankings, validate link partners making sure they are still linking back, transfer and copy link partners from one site to another, receive email notifications for new link requests and view statistics for duplicate submissions and ip addresses. Directories are easy to set up and automatically create good themed pages related to your categories of choice, keyword focus within the url along with unique Browser Titles and Meta Tags related to your category.

Managing links manually takes quite a bit of time and effort and utilizing good link management software will not only help you identify good link partners and flag those unethical link partners but will also cut your link management hours down tremendously, so you can focus on what you do best, your core business.