There are many reasons for engaging in a link campaign. In Google, links are one of the most important factors in determining a sites rank in the search engine results page (SERPs).
Since this is such a crucial factor in Google's algorithm (as well as the other search engines), a link campaign should be part of your search engine marketing efforts.
First, let's define the different types of links that a site can have:
Reciprocal link - this is where two sites exchange links to each other's sites.
One-way (In-Bound) link - where one site links to another site without receiving a link back.
Reciprocal linking is a very time consuming task when done correctly. During this process, a webmaster will scour the Internet looking for relevant sites that he or she can trade links with.
Once they have obtained a list of suitable sites, a personalized email is sent to the respective webmasters and a request for an exchange takes place. A typical letter would read as follows:
Dear Webmaster:
While researching quality sites to request link exchanges from, I found your site. I would like to offer an exchange of links from my site to yours. Below is our site's information:
Title: Google Search Engine Optimization
URL: http://www.seoforgoogle.com
Description: Get the Google search engine optimization guide that shows you in precise detail how to get your site top rankings in Google for your keywords.
If you are interested, please reply with your site's information and where our link was placed.
If you're not interested, your lack of response will indicate your desired action.
Thank you for your time,
Your name
your email
If and when you receive some repsonses, you should add their sites as soon as you can, and send them an email telling them that their link has been added, and include the url where they can see their site.
You will have to routinely check your partners to make sure they are still linking to your site in order to continue the partnership. Most webmasters are honest and will keep you linked, but there are a few rotten apples out there.
In-Bound (One-way) Links are the best type of links if you can get them. It's not all that difficult to do so, but as in anything worth while, there will be an amount of effort involved.
The easiest way to get In bound links to your site is to do directory submissions. There are many great free directories to submit to, and it's worth the time and effort to get listed in as many as you possibly can.
There are also fee-based directories which you submit to, and as your budget allows, you should try to get listed in all directories that are relevant to your site's topic.
The next way to get one-way links to your site is to do a press release. With sites such as prwire, you can submit a press release to them for free, and that will not only get your site exposure, but it will also get you some in-bound links.
If you have the ability to compose articles or columns, there are many sites that can get your site exposure by you allowing them to re-print your content. While some may argue that this procedure may penalize you in the search engines for duplicate content, as long as you have posted your article to your site first, you shouldn't get hit by a duplicate content penalty.
Depending on how many sites you allow for your information to be published wil also create in-bound links to your site. So the question you have to consider is control of your content versus web exposure.
If you have an online business, you should always include your site's url in your email signature. Many people use either Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail which are all web-based systems, so they read the urls contained in the email and thus add to your back-link totals.
One piece of consideration: When you submit your site information to be linked from, make sure your anchor text (the clickable part) is one of the keywords you are trying to get your site ranked for. What you are telling the search engines is that the destination of the url is about whatever the text link was. So, if your text link says "eggs", the search engine would expect that page to be about eggs.
-To your online success!
Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com
