Got links?

I know that one way to get popular in search engines is to get popular sites to link to you. How can I find sites that will link to me? And, how do I go about asking them to link to me?

Thanks.

Politely email them and ask for a link exchange. For the most part the message will be viewed as spam, but eventually you should be able to get someone to trade links with you.

Also asking for a link without giving anything in return might result in no response or a less than polite one.

that's pretty much it right there...never hurts to ask.

Try reading my amateur article...

http://webmaster-link-swap-tools.com/ho ... links.html


Bompa

You may want to try searching the web for reciprocal link directories. You will most likely find a large amount of sites where you can exchange links with them.

A good one that I use is linkpartners.com

They list some good sites that exchanges links with others.

Hope this helps you!

Bompa your article sums things up nicely. Much of what you have said there is how I worked my sites up to the PR value they have now. The most important part of your article I think is how to find the places to get links from. Do this by going to google and using the link: query on your competition's websites. I have obtained numerous backlinks to the sites I run by doing that. It is a very slick trick probably only a small majority use.

Beware of link partner sites, google has shut down a lot of link farms in the past and although your site will trade links with other sites, often link partner sites require you to link back to them which google may penalize.

What I do when I start with a new client is to look at his competitors backlinks. You can usually find a lot of sites that will links to you.

I've looked into link swapping a little before. The only problem is that the only sites who want to swap links are low PR sites. (This makes sense... why would a high PR site want to swap links?)

Does anyone know if link swapping sites actually work? Or, would I be better off searching for sites to swap links with myself? (Not using a 3rd-party link swapping site)

Well look at your competitors or sites like yours and take a look at the backlinks. All the backlinks (google toolbar) shown are from sites will a PR of at least 4. Find sites within the list to exchange or submit your site to. I do almost all my link submits, exchanges this way.

Everybody here, so far, has been taking about swapping links or trading links or exchanging links. These are all reciprocal links. They can help, but they are not nearly as useful as non-reciprocal links.

When I optimize for a client, I build a strategy for attracting primarily non-reciprocal links. And it works.

Before I hear the usual chorus of "It can't be done"s, I have a client whose policy is not to link out. Period. When they hired me, they were stuck at #8 in Google for their top most competitive search term. They now hold the #3 and #4 spots (still working on #2).

I don't have any philosophical opposition to exchanging links, as long as those do not form the majority of inbound links. (When Google gets its act together, ti will deeply discount exchanged links, since they are nothing more than an attempt to manipulate their results.) However, I generally work on less-valuable reciprocal links only when the non-reciprocal link well starts running dry.

I agree with you. I do not have any "links" pages on any of my clients sites. I go and look for sites to submit my site to, not to exchange links. But in many areas, in can be quite a large task to find sites to submit your site to, many places now charge for that kind of thing. But for someone who doesn't want to spend hours looking for a site in their business area and has a tight budget, exchanging links may be the way to go. Just make sure you do it correctly and with reputable sites.

How do you get non-reciprocal links? (Paid links?)

Well, if everyone has a policy to not link out, nobody would get linked.

To get paid links, you just have to look around in your business area. If I go hunting, I find many links in my area that offer paid links.

Submit to directories.
Write articles.
Provide syndicated content.
Create something really cool that other sites will want to link to.

There are many ways to get non-reciprocal links. If a client is rich, and the ROI is worth it, paid links are an option. But they are more temporary.