by Corey Rudl

In my opinion one of the most powerful ways to market online is through linking strategies. What you want to do is get other high traffic websites to link to you. Their links to you will then generate traffic for your site.

Let's say that in your business niche there are a few hundred websites out there generating a million visitors a year, there are hundreds of websites that are generating 30,000 a year and another thousand that are generating 10,000 a year. These are websites that are directly related to your business. What if you can get these people linking to you and recommending your services or products? You are taking their traffic and funneling it right into your website.

Just take a look at the power of this.

If you get a link from their site it will probably stay there forever. While your link is up, they are continually sending traffic to you... day after day, week after week, year after year!

So the work you do now, in getting a link from them, will pay off for days, weeks, months, and years.

The sooner you get the link from them, the better it is for you as the traffic that comes in from their link can only grow because as they grow, they will just send you more and more traffic your way as time goes on. In other words, if your link is on their site and their visitor count starts going up, more traffic is going to flow from their site to yours.

This is a great way to use other people to generate traffic for you! However, it seems to be a very misunderstood and unused way of marketing right now. People will say "Oh yeah, I asked a pile of people to exchange links with me and it doesn't work." Well you have to go about it in a unique way. You can't just email somebody and say "I want to know if you want to trade links."

That isn't going to work!

Let's get onto the basics on how to properly do this.

You will first have to identify who your target audience is, who you want to reach, and where that target audience hangs out. If they are visiting certain types of websites or forums, you have to find out which ones. You then need to go to those websites and get some personal information about them.

Get the owner's first name, look for some information you find interesting at the website. Find where a link to you could fit in at their website. Once you've got that information, and only once you have that, email them and mention all of this so that it is very personalized.

You can say something along the lines of "Hi John, I visited your website at [insert URL here] and I noticed that your resource page has [insert personal comment here] and I wanted to mention that we have a website that educates customers on [insert list of stuff here] techniques and [insert list of information here] information and great articles on [list articles here]. This would fit perfectly into your resource center and I'm sure your visitors would just love that. And I wanted to let you know that this could be a great asset for your visitors." Blah... blah... blah.

You haven't talked about what's in it for you, you haven't talked about how great you are or your fantastic products. You just show them how linking to you is going to be a benefit to their visitors. You talk about "what's in it for them". Their visitors are going to like them more because they have a greater list of resources, this makes them look good and they become an even better resource for their visitors.

And, of course you get traffic from them which makes this all worthwhile for you.

If they don't respond to this offer, email them back and up the ante. Instead of just saying "hey, link to us", now say, "lets exchange links because I think we are co-operative businesses, not competitive. You link to me and I will link back to you." And then make it very easy for them to link to you by giving them the exact HTML code to put in the webpage.

Don't just say "hey, lets exchange links". That's too general. Give them the specifics in order to make it really easy for them. The idea here is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. So if you make it really easy for them to link to you they are probably going to do it. If they have go through a series of emails and talking on the phone in order to figure out how to link to you and how to get you the information you need, they are going to think it's not worth the effort.

The key here is making it really easy for them.

Tell them how this is a mutually beneficial way to do business. That you can send them customers because your market research has shown that your customers want to buy or be involved in a site like theirs and that in return their visitors would probably want to hear from you because it is a related site and it has great information. This is basically a win-win situation for both of you.

Don't forget simple things like putting a direct contact phone number at the bottom of your email and maybe even a mailing address if you want them to sign a contract. They should be able to pick up the phone and call you right away. Give them the hours in which you can be reached and so on.

In my personal experience, I like to call the people directly and talk to them... build rapport and get them to link to me. Now that my companies are the size that they are, I actually have a full-time employee who does just this throughout his ENTIRE DAY!

Your job is to make it really easy for them to get involved with you. By laying it all out for them, all they have to do is reply and say, "Yes, we'll put up your link in two days." There's no emailing back and forth trying to figure out what you are going to say or how are you going to word it and where it should go.

If you want to do business with the big boys, if you want to deal with people who are getting lots of traffic, you have to make it very simple for them because they will not listen to you unless you do. Everyone else makes it hard, so be different and stand out from the crowd. Make it easy for them and you will get the business.

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