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Search engine optimization is something that has been around for quite some time but it is a constantly changing environment.  Whenever the Internet was still new, people would exchange links with each other in a one-to-one fashion and the search engines would gobble them up.  Not only that, it was possible for you to rank highly for some very competitive keywords just by exchanging links with other websites.  At that particular time, it really didn’t matter who you were exchanging links with or how many links you exchanged, it was more of a free-for-all than anything else.

Since those days, the way that people link has really changed.  Incoming links to your website are still a very important part of any good search engine optimization campaign.  The fact of the matter is, you really can not rank as well if you are only exchanging links with other websites.  In order to really get the most power out of your incoming links, you need to make sure that they are one way and preferably from websites that are related to yours.  Although there are a lot of different ways that people do this, one of the best ways is by putting out some link bait and allowing it to work for you.

Link bait is really nothing more than content that is interesting enough that people will want to link to it naturally.  You can put this content up on your blog or you can build static webpages that contains it, either one will work very well.  The most important part about this content is that it needs to be interesting so that people will link to it.  If it is just your normal, run-of-the-mill content, people are going to read it and ignore it.  The best way to make sure that your link bait is effective is to either make it humorous or controversial.

Once you have your link bait page up and running, you need to get some initial traffic to it in order to get the ball rolling.  If you are effective in writing this type of content, it becomes viral in nature once the links start coming in.  The best way for you to be able to do this is to post it on some of the blog posting websites such as a digg.com.  If your website gets additional digs as a result of it being on there, they can stay at the top of the list for quite some time and the flood of traffic that you will be getting is phenomenal.  You should also make sure that you’re using stumbleupon.com as this can send an additional stream of traffic to your website.

Although this type of linking is good, the real benefit will come whenever people start referring to your page on their blog or website.  This is where the real search engine optimization benefits come from and it can pull your listings up through the search engines very quickly.

To your success!

Guido Nussbaum

Building website traffic through the use of links is one of the oldest ways of marketing your website.  It used to be relatively easy to get these links to come in your website and people would gladly exchange links for a variety of different reasons.  First, they loved to get the direct traffic they came from links because the people were already interested in what they were talking about.  Secondly, it gave them a healthy boost to the search engine rankings and it is still possible to do so today.  The problem is, many of the search engines are now starting to ignore reciprocal links to a certain extent.  Search engine rankings that were once built on these exchanged links now seem to be going the way of the dinosaur.  Does that mean that exchanging links is dead?

Many people still exchange links on a regular basis and they do so with a lot of success.  Although the old reciprocal link directories may not work quite as well as they used to, if you’re able to exchange links in the proper way you can still get a lot of traffic to your website in a short period of time.  The real key comes in finding link partners and not simply looking for a massive amount of links.  These link partners are out there and they are willing to exchange links with you if you sweeten the pot to a certain extent.  Here is one way that you can do that.

If you have a popular website or blog that gets a lot of repeat traffic, you can display how many links you are sending to them by simply adding a link to their website on your blog.  Put in a prominent location and let it sit there for a week or two, getting people to click over to it on a regular basis.  Use a script to keep track of how many people are clicking on that link and then e-mail them that information after a week or two has expired.  If they are getting 10 or 20 clicks a day or more from you, they would be more willing to add a link to your website in return.  The hardest part about doing this is waiting for the initial period to end but getting a decent link from another website will make it all worth the effort.

Of course, you don’t need to stick with exchanging links in order to get some inbound traffic.  You can get incoming links in a variety of different ways such as article writing, leaving comments on other blogs and forum marketing.  As long as you do these things properly, you would be surprised with the amount of traffic that will come your way.  Reciprocal links still have their place and they will probably always work to a certain extent.  Make sure that you make them a part of your marketing effort and you will be happy that you’ve done so.