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Linking to other sites

greatdays

New Member
affiliate
Hi!

I want to link my business to other sites. They want me in to
place their links or banners on my site. What kind of a page should I
have to put all of their many links and banners? What is a "merchant's
landing page"?

Thanks for your response,

greatnews:)
 
If you are selling their products, the links and banners need to go on the product or information pages you are selling.
If on one page you are "selling" shampoo, then the affiliate links for the merchants that are selling bath products would go on that page.

The merchant page is the page that once someone clicks on your link will take them to the company you are promoting. It could be a product page or the merchants home page, or anything in between.

Landing page is where the person will "land" (end up at) once they click your link.
 
You mean a free link exchange?
You would have a seperate page called something like "Sites that we like" and have links to other sites related to your business. I would be sure to only exchange links with sites that can relate to your site.

I would also try to stay away from having to many banners and stick with text links for link exchanges. Unless the site you are exchanging links with gives you a good spot on their site.
 
banner-ads and text-links

First of all, Chet is wise for suggesting text-links. Historically they have outperformed banner-ads.

I have another recommendation for optimizing placement of ads and links. I often suggest that you repeatedly place links on different pages. Often times when consumers see these links several times over, they are more likely to click on them. I know this might sound confusing, but this strategy really seems to work.

Hope this helps,
 
I just heard a great "link partner" strategy that makes a lot of sense to me.

Have separate link page categories such as business, entertainment, SEO, financial, etc. and don't have more than 25 links on each page. So, in other words, if you have more than 25 links in the business section, you could have business links and then have page #1, page#2, etc.

This way, your link pages are more of an organized resource rather than just a long list of links. It makes it more attractive to your potential link partners.

Also, you should put a link to their site before you ask them to put a link on your site and show them the page that their link is on.

Sheree

P.S. I also agree with the minimum banners on your site. You don't want it to look like a billboard.
 
I have yet to actually put this into practice because I've just been redesigning my sites and I've been slacking on the link exchanging but I'm starting to get enough links that I'll be doing exactly what I just talked about as my next project.

Where do you guys go for link exchanges anyway? Do you just email webmasters whose sites you admire or do you use link exchange services, or both?

I've only just got my sites to the point where I actually want to email webmasters. I'm kind of a perfectionist and I had to have my sites a certain way before I felt that I had the nerve to do this.

I actually just read a really good book about SEO that I'm about to put into practice. That's where I learned about the 25 links per page organization deal. I think it makes so much sense because I know I have links on sites where I'm just another in a huge sea of like 100 links or whatever. This just seems more professional to me.

I think I'm going to make videos while on my SEO adventure.

Sheree
 
You know I love Yahoo groups

I'm thinking about making an iframe of the link page on a compatable sub index page where people can add their link and they have to register to do so. What do you guys think of that?
I had to edit this it made no sense lol

In yahoo groups there's a link page. I can add that link page to a subindex page on my site using an iframe

Rick
 
Only exchange links with sites that add value to your site, value for your visitors that is. Don't do it because of search engines, because that can potentially cause you more harm than good. Ignore those (mostly automated) emails from other websites that want to exchange links with your for the sole purpose of "improving search engine visibility/ranking".

That worked maybe pre-2005 and even better pre-2003. Search Engines hate artificial links that only serve the purpose of manipulating their search results.

Search Engines have a wide range of penalties and punishments for abusive webmasters, depending on the case and the extend of manipulation. Linking out to very abusive websites will harm your own reputation as well, because linking to them is the equivalent of associating yourself with them (in the real world). You don't want to be associated with a bad neighborhood, don't you?

Just keep those things in mind. Cheers!
 
I actually just read a really good book about SEO that I'm about to put into practice. That's where I learned about the 25 links per page organization deal. I think it makes so much sense because I know I have links on sites where I'm just another in a huge sea of like 100 links or whatever. This just seems more professional to me.

Can you please share what books you read.

Thanks
 
Only exchange links with sites that add value to your site, value for your visitors that is. Don't do it because of search engines, because that can potentially cause you more harm than good.

Very Nice input Carsten! I would have exactly suggested the same thing. Be wary of bad neighborhood sites, link farms, adult sites, banned sites, etc. as this will adversely affect your PR. Always build backlinks which are targeted and adds quality as this helps more in reaching your target audience and eventually in PR building of your site - from an SEO point of view ;)
 
Can you please share what books you read.

Thanks

I can recommend the eBook from Aaron Wall (SEOBook). It seems to be expensive ($79), but it is worth every penny. It is actually more than ONE book. He could make three books out of it, but I guess he is like J.R.R. Tolkin who wrote his "book" The Lord of the Rings to have his publisher split it up into three easier digestible books hehe.

Other good print books are the following older books for the basics
- "Search Engine Marketing, Inc." by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt
- "The ABC of SEO" by David George

and the more recent book by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin called "Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day". The last three books are $20 - $30 each.

Another good eBook is "The VEO Report" by Colin McDougall (also $79)

If you have an e-Consultancy membership, check out the "Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Best Practice Guide". They have tons of other guides and resources and you can access free samples to check for yourself if their content seems to be useful for what you are doing. I would not recommend to buy a single guide from them ($299), but get the annual membership ($389 for an individual), which provides access to everything. The membership costs as much as 2 individual items, but they have tons of stuff to various Internet marketing subjects.

Another good source for information is Marketing Sherpa. They also offer a membership to access many of their studies. Not their famous benchmark guides though. :( Their membership costs also $397, but they offer a free trial to test them out.

I hope this helps.

p.s. All the basic stuff is out there on the internet, btw. Free of charge. Just check some of the good SEO blogs out there, such as. Search Engine Land, SEOMoz, SEOBook, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch Blog, Search Engine Round Table etc. etc.
 
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