10 Untold Traffic Secrets: part 7

6 – New Fashioned Link Strategies
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It’s been true since the birth of the World Wide Web: people like pages of
useful links. They’ll bookmark them and return to them. And today, because
links are so important to search engine rank, link pages should be part of
every targeted traffic plan.
Old fashioned link pages are the ones you build by hand, painstakingly, over
many months and years. These are annotated links pages that include not
only a URL, but a brief description of the site and its contents. These
“handmade” link pages take a lot of time and a lot of effort. Frankly,
they are slowly dying out on the web.

But thanks to web-based services and innovative software, you can
build useful pages of links while enjoying all the search engine
benefits – and without all that painstaking labor. Every serious affiliate
marketer should lthink about creative ways to take advantage of these “new
fashioned” link strategies
One simple new fashioned strategy is to set up a links page through a service
like Bravenet. With this type of page, webmasters fill in a form to
“apply” for a reciprocal link with you. On this page, you can explain that
the application is subject to review, and that you will only link to them if
they’ve ALREADY linked to you.
You can also include required text for the link they give you – you definitely
want your keywords or your “brand name’ in that link! And you can even set
up a response email, which can be customized. This response email
should ask everyone who applies to send you the full URL of the page
where they’ve got your link.
But don’t stop there. Once a webmaster sends you the URL where your
link appears, submit that link to Google. Just go to
www.google.com/addurl.html, fill in the form, and add the page with your
link. Submit it to any other relevant search engine or directory. You want
those search engines to know that page exists so they can spider it as fast as
possible.
After you’ve accepted the other webmaster’s link, it will get added to your
custom link page. So make sure your links page gets added to your site map.
In fact, make sure you link to it from EVERY page of your site.