Reciprocal Links Management

Managing Reciprocal link trades wisely

Personalize all email requests as much as possible when requesting for a link trade. Tell them you have put a link to their site and give the URL where it can be viewed. Tell them why you both would make good link partners and ask them to link back to you and don't forget to give them your description and URL. Please read my article on emailing link partners for more information.

Get links naturally and don't go over board! Get links naturally if you can. If you suddenly have 100 new link partners to your site after only a month, Google and other search engines will raise questions. Make is seem like you are not trying to inflate your link popularity on purpose.

Making the assumption that a large links page is all you will need is wrong. Use good judgment and build a directory for your visitors and not the search engines. One page with with hundreds of links is useless and overdone for your visitors and search engines will red flag it. Create quality categorized directories with relevant link partner sites. Don't mix it up, site owners will not want to be placed next to gambling or non related links either.

Choose the link partner carefully. After visiting the site you wish to place your link, make sure the sites content is relevant to yours. Also, check the Google page rank of the web site and make sure Google has given them a good grade. If you are unaware of Google's page rank, download the Google toolbar for your browser. The Google toolbar will tell you how Google ranks that page. To prevent placing your site on pages that are hidden or given no spider access, only place your link on pages that have an actual Google page rank. Remember, obtaining a quality referral from the site is more important than obtaining hundreds of non quality referral links. If the web sites links directory has no page rank, then the site could be new, banned or not indexing their links directories. I would be weary and pass on any link exchanges that have zero page ranked links pages. If some of these sites acknowledge your efforts and end up linking to your site, it will take just a few sites with high Google page ranks to boost your sites page rank. For more information please read my article on identifying good link partners.

Make categorized links pages, and put no more than 25 link partners per page. Use a quality system to categorize the links and follow your industry theme. You should also link to your links page or directory from your home page through your footer at the bottom of your page so a spider can index your links directory. Good quality link partners will not trade links if you're not linking from your home page or at least your site map.

Keep track of your link partners. After requesting your link be placed on a particular web site you selected, wait it out for a couple of weeks before you contact the site again. If you're going after quality sites with good Google PR, just remember the site owners are also very busy and will most likely have hundreds of other link requests to consider. The site owner or webmaster will get to your link when their schedule permits. If for some reason you don't get a response, just email the site again and give a friendly reminder. Be courteous, and the site still doesn't link back after a follow up request - then send a final notice email letting the site know you've moved on and have removed their link and find someone else. When a new link partner links back to you, use software or a good links management program like 123LinksManager.com to record the sites information. If you accidentally delete or move the link, you'll have the records to inform your link partner before they choose to remove your link in the same manner.

Maintaining your reciprocal links. Maintenance of your links can be quite a burden. Not only do you have to qualify each new request, but as your site grows you have to sift through all the spam and robot spiders that are trying to get listed on your site. What about validating and making sure your links are still on your link partner's sites? Are you just clicking to make sure it's there? Are you sure they are not using unethical tactics and utilizing search engine tricks to not index or follow your links from their site? What about fallen page ranks? If your site was on a links page with a Google Page Rank of 3 and all of a sudden it's zero, shouldn't that be a red flag? Do you have the time or skills to identify all these flags? What about emailing and keeping track of your link partner's emails and soliciting for new requests. What if you decide to move a link to a more appropriate category? If you do not have the time or the skills to manage these very time consuming tasks then maybe you should invest in quality links management software!

123LinksManger.com is the perfect software solution. Not only does 123LinksManager provide the valuable resources and tools mentioned above, but it was designed by search engine specialists that know how to get into the top ten positions. For cost conscientious users and webmasters the cost is cheaper than the main competition at $225/year per domain or $150/yr if you're a hosted client. Also, if you're hosting multiple sites, each additional site is only $50/year. You can create a one way directory and have potential link partners that don't meet your linking requirements fully, provide one way links to your site while you link to them from your directory. If you get a quality referral or solicitation the software makes it easy with a push of a button to transfer the link partner's information to the new domain! You could easily create a new links directory on an entirely different domain and when you're complete, transfer all of your link partners within your current directory and solicit them with the click of a button and they'll be populated in your new directory with ease.