18. Link Partner Pages

In this chapter I want to look at the topic of links pages. I have a confession to make… I don’t actually put much effort into my own links pages, and don’t go out aggressively looking for link partners.

My own strategy is simple.

1. Setup a links page using the LinkMachine script that allows me to easily add partners, remove partners and check up on partners. You can see this script in action on my ezseo Directory site. The whole site is created and updated using the Link Machine Script.

2. Write 10-20 quality articles for my new site and submit them to various resources on the internet (more about this later in the series).

3. Wait.

After a few weeks, interesting things start to happen.

My articles have been republished on a number of sites, with links pointing back to my site. The PR of my site increases, as do my rankings, making my site visible to other webmasters. I start getting link exchange requests, and accept those that meet my own criteria (more about these in a minute).

While this is going on, the Link Machine script is actually bringing me in link exchanges requests as well. You see, webmasters who use this script can quickly and easily contact other webmasters in their niche, and request exchanges.

All of this means that my own reciprocal link building is easy, hassle-free, and to a large extent, automated.

OK, it all sounds very easy, doesn’t it? Well, to a large extent it is. I sit back and wait for others to contact me.

However, there is one main problem with links pages that you should be aware of (and I know there are a few people who will disagree with me here, but that’s OK.). The search engines actually don’t like pages set up for exchanging links. To them, this constitutes an artificial method of getting links to your site and improving your sites ranking.

This is the main reason I don’t work hard at getting reciprocal links any more. As we will discuss later in this course, there are other, better ways of getting links into your site.

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