Building a Linking Campaigns

A link is a button, phrase, graphic or ad that's programmed to jump to another Web site when clicked.

In a linking campaign, the link is text only, using keywords, and looks like this: Learn more about antique robot toys.

When you click on the phrase "antique robot toys," you're sent to another site, possibly called www.antiquerobottoys.com.

You can use a linking campaign to get traffic from someone else's site. And quite often, in return, your site would provide a link to the other person's site. This is called reciprocal links: "I help you and you help me." It's a great way to build business relationships that are mutually profitable.

Link campaigns are usually free and can be quite useful if you're set up as a link on a site that's relevant and very popular with your target prospects.

For example, if you offer a home organizing service in a specific region of the country, you might find a site that sells closet organizer equipment in that region and set up reciprocal links.

The trick to successful linking campaigns is to choose popular sites among your target prospects, with good track records.

Your Web team will use the following quality indicators to evaluate sites you're considering for a linking campaign.

• Domain age-how long has the site been around?
• Incoming links from .edu and .gov? (These rank higher than .com for credibility)
• Quality directory listings-did DMOZ rank the site via human editing?
• Link quality-are the people coming to your site ready to BUY?
• Deep link ratio-how many levels of links are involved, how many are relevant, and how many pages are involved?
• Page rank-how does the site rank in search engines?
• Number of pages indexed-just the home page, or many more?

For more marketing information please go to the Neuland Business Campus and sign up for an online marketing seminar or go to the Book Store.

Next week we will talk about the benefits of a Online Auctions. Until then have a fun week, C S Wurzberger