Strategies for Finding Appropriate Link Sites

Ideally, you should be linked from every high-traffic site that is of interest
to your target market. Develop a strategy to find all of these sites
and arrange links.

Start with the popular search engines. Most people use search engines
and directories to find subjects of interest on the Internet. Most of
the people searching never go beyond the first 20 to 30 results that the
search engine returns. Thus, these top 20 to 30 sites get a lot of traffic.
Search relevant keywords in all the popular search engines and directories,
and investigate these top sites for link possibilities. Some of these
sites will be competitors and might not want to reciprocate links. The
best opportunity for links is with noncompeting sites that have the same
target market. I suggest you take your most important keywords, do a
keyword search in the 20 most popular search engines and directories,
and review the top 30 sites in each for potential link sites.
Another strategy to find useful link sites is to see where the leaders
in your industry and your competitors are linked. I use the term “competitors”
very loosely. It would include your direct competitors, your
industry leaders, companies selling noncompeting products to your target
market, companies selling similar types of products or services to
your target market, and companies that compete with you for search
engine ranking. See what your competition is doing. Determine where
they are linked from, and decide whether these are sites that you should
also be linked from. Learn what they are doing well, and also learn
from their mistakes. You should be linked everywhere your competition
is appropriately linked, and then some.

Explore These URLs

There are many tools on the Internet to help you identify a Web site’s
links. These tools can be used to see which sites are linking to your Web
site. But they can also be used to see what sites are linking to your
competition. This is a great way to research where your site could be
linked from but isn’t—yet! Let me walk you through a step-by-step process
to increase the number of links to your Web site.
When determining which sites you should be linked from, you first
have to develop a lengthy list of competitors. A competitor can be any
business or site that offers the same products or services as you do or
Developing a Dynamite Link Strategy 265
anyone targeting the same demographic group. Because the Internet creates
a level playing field for all businesses, you are also competing against
large and small companies from around the globe. Someone using a
search engine to find information on services that your company can
provide might see results from companies from all across the world in
the top ten results.
Once you have developed your extensive list of competitors and
have gathered their URLs, you must then find out what sites they are
linked from. Tools have been developed to assist you in finding who is
linking to your site. In most cases you enter your URL, and then these
tools provide a list of sites linking to it. However, by entering the URL
for a competitor’s site you can just as easily determine which sites are
linking to your competition and industry leaders.

The more organized you are for this exercise, the better. I suggest
that you:

1. Gather an extensive list of competitors and their URLs.
2. Choose the tool(s) from the next section that you are going to use for this exercise.
3. Enter the first competitor URL to find the sites linking to it.
4. Copy and paste the results into a Word, Notepad, or other file that you can access later.
5. Enter the next competitor URL to find the sites linking to it.
6. Copy and paste the results into the same Word, Notepad, or other file, adding to your list of otential link sites.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you have found all the sites linking to your competition. When this is done, you have your potential link sites list.
8. Now develop a link request (see the next section for details) and keep it open on your desktop so that you can copy and paste it into an e-mail when you find a site you’d like to have a link from.
9. Next, visit every one of the potential link sites to determine whether the site is appropriate for you to be linked from. If so, 266 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site send your link request. If the site is not appropriate for whatever reason, delete it from your list. Also delete duplicates. When you get to the bottom of your list, it has changed from a potential links list to a request links list.
10. Follow through and follow up. Follow through and provide an appropriate link to those who agree to a reciprocal link. Follow up to make sure that they provide the link to your site as promised, that the link works, and that it is pointing to the correct page on your site.
11. Submit the Internet address of the page that has provided the link to the popular search engines so that they know it’s there.

This will help boost your link popularity scores.