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By James D. Brausch of Target Blaster
[June 12th, 2002]
Exchanging links with sites of a similar topic is the most
effective free form of advertising I have ever found. It
really is the most direct way to improve your web
presence. This is the nature of the Internet... The more
paths you have to your site, the more traffic you will
have. If you don't have a link exchange program, start
one today.
What? You don't want links to other sites on your
corporate or e-commerce site? No problem. I addressed
that in a previous article called "A Tale of Two Sites".
Now that you have an active link exchange program, I can
get on with the real topic of this article. I want to
talk about the importance of having an "Add URL" page and
the important elements of your own "Add URL" page.
What is an "Add URL" page? It is a page where you
describe how you would like others to link to your site
and invite them to submit a link to be listed on your
site. Here is an example which illustrates most of the
points I'll make in this.
It is a lot of work to get your first 200-300 inbound
links to your site by finding and soliciting link
exchanges from other sites. Once you do that work, you
deserve a reward. Having an "Add URL" page like this one
is part of your reward. After doing all that work, you
will have enough traffic that you will start receiving
link requests from your own "Add URL" page with no work
to go find these sites. Pretty cool, huh?
Let's talk about the important elements of your
"Add URL" page that will maximize its effectiveness:
- Place a link to your Add URL page on the navigation bar
that you use on every page of your site. This page is
important enough to warrant it's own place on your
navigation bar.
- Make your link say "Add URL", not "Submit Site" or
"Add Link" or anything else. Trust me on this. I have
already performed all of the click-thru analysis on every
combination of words imaginable. You will receive your
best response if the links to your Add URL page use the
words "Add URL".
- At the top of your "Add URL" page, use your major
keyword in a large heading. The major keyword for the
example page is "Marketing". You'll notice that it says
"Marketing Index - Add URL" in large type at the top of
the page. This will help the search engines know what
your page is about. After some time, you'll start getting
traffic directly to your "Add URL" page from the search
engines for phrases like "[your keyword] add url".
- Next encourage your visitor to link to your site before
requesting a link. You'll notice that the example page
starts right out with "First link to my site". Don't be
tempted to start making your visitor jump through hoops to
prove that they have already linked before going on. You
want them to submit their link even if they don't
immediately link to you. If everyone refused to provide
a link before the other site linked to them... well...
no-one would ever link up; would they?
- Guide them in how to link to your site, but leave it up
to them to create a link of their own if they want. There
are as many different kinds of webmasters as there are
different kinds of people. You need to recognize that
some are lazy and are only willing to copy/paste some code
you provide... while others have a very specific format
for links on their site and want to do everything for
themselves.
The author, James D. Brausch, is the Vice President of
Marketing for
Target Blaster, Inc., an Internet Marketing
firm specializing in targeted traffic.
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