Say you are Joe Shopkeeper and you are selling motorcycle T-shirts and gifts at your online store through CafePress (or any other site for that matter). You want people to link to your store. You know that having other web sites link to your store or web site will help it rise in the ranks on search engine sites like Google. You also know that the higher ranking the sites are that link to your shop, the better it is for your rankings. So how can you actively seek out and ask for quality links?First, you can read a previous tutorial I did on finding quality links. "How can I get links to my site?" Tutorial: Using Google Directory to find quality links
But Joe Shopkeeper is impatient! He wants links and he wants them NOW. He doesn't care about quality, he wants quantity. (and he has yet to learn about SEO...more on that in another post)
Once again, we begin with Google (pretty much the place I start anything on the web!).
1) Go to Google.com
Joe Shopkeeper goes to Google.com., types in "motorcycle" and sees that there are about 87,800,000 web sites with "motorcycle" in them.
Joe is stumped.
Should he sift through all 87 million sites to see which ones have link pages that he can maybe be listed on?
Of course not!
Back to step one, Joe:
1) Go to Google and type in "motorcycle links" and hit "search"
Notice that there are now about a fourth as many sites that pop up (around 22,000,000). But there is a significant difference: this time every site (or at least nearly every site) that shows up in this search result HAS A MOTORCYCLE LINKS PAGE that likely wants Joe's link on it!
2) Click on a result that looks promising (something that mentions a links page).
For Joe Shopkeeper I clicked on result #3, which took me right to a motorcycle links page on a motorcycle website and right at the bottom of the page was this: "E-mail your favorite biker-related URL's to: [email address]."
This site is asking Joe to send them his link...ASKING him. It doesn't get any easier.
Success in two clicks!
Let's review:
1) go to Google
2) Type in "[your key word] links"
Other variations on this method is to type in your key word plus "directory" or "free directory" or "link exchange" or "favorite links"...you get the idea.
Reciprocal Links: the potential downside to this method of link hunting...
Often times these webmasters will require a reciprocal link if you want to be listed on their links page. A reciprocal link is when you place a link on your web site that goes back to their web site. Why do people do this? They want lots of sites pointing to their site, too (don't we all?). If you are building a links page yourself, then you probably don't mind adding reciprocal links, however, there are some things to consider when it comes to reciprocal linking.
When it comes to reciprocal links ask yourself:
• Do they add value to my website or just "junk it up?"
• Will the webmaster of the other site gurantee my link won't be dropped in the future?
• Will the website I'm linking to reflect well on me and my company? Do I want to endorse them?
• Will my link on the other site be in a prominent place or buried where it has little to no value?
• Will the other site use shady methods to render my link worthless? (I just learned about a way that some free directory sites format your link so that it has little to no value to Google...I don't know enough about this to offer any sort of advice yet other than to seek out more infomation on it and use caution when doing reciprocal links). AskDaveTaylor.com might have some advice here.
• If my shop is a CafePress shop, will my link (on their site) be turned into an affiliate link without my knowledge? (if so, you have no obligation to list that person's link on your site!)
I hope this helps you in your link hunt. Remember, the best way to get people to link to you will always be to have good content that people will want to link to. That is the best place to put your time. Once you have a worthwhile site to link to, then go hunting.
I've tried this method of searching for links pages and have had many good results with it. It's not a bad place to start when you want to get noticed by certain groups of people (demographics) on the web. Once you're more established, however, you'll probably find this method tiresome. But give it a try. You never know who you'll meet or what you'll find along the way.
Good luck!
