Swapping links with other webmasters

Getting popular by swapping links with other webmasters

Swapping links is one of the most important things you can do if you want to get more traffic to your website. Here is some solid advice I have learned over several years of managing sites.

1. Text links are very effective because they give the search engine some good information to consider about your site. Let me give you an example.

Here is a text link to storm the castle.com

Storm The Castle.com - The webs fantasy and creativity site. All things medieval including projects on how to make video games, siege engines and other renaissance and medieval things.

When a search engine sees this it looks at the text around the actual link to get a feel for what the site is about, it is assigning keyword values to the link and to your site. So I have told the search engine important stuff about my site. You should always consider text links. And if you do not have any artistic skills you don't have to worry about making a nice banner.

Don't Know how to write the proper html code for a text link? Here it is. All you have to do is replace the text in red with your text.( remove all the red and put in your own text and this is exactly what you give to other webmasters to paste into their site).

<A href="url of your website goes here ">and put the description of your website here </A>

2. Banner Links are ok - But you have to consider the fact that your banner link is something you want people on the other site to click on. This is adirect way of getting traffic from sites that are similar to yours. When exchanging banners with other sites always make sure the alt tag is filled in. This alt tag gives the search engine more information about your site.

If you are considering making banners for your website I recommend you make them a standard size. Many websites use standard banner sizes. the banner above is a standard 468 pixels by 60 pixels.

Other standard banner sizes are:

120 x 60 pixels

125 x 125 pixels

88 x 31 pixels ( a button)

How to swap links with other webmasters

1. the first thing you can do is a search engine check of websites that are similar to yours. Type in a keyword then go to the other sites. If these other sites are something you might like to exchange links with then simply send the webmaster an email or look for information about banner and link exchanges.

2. User groups and forums - either yahoo groups, google groups or other types of forums are a great place to meet people with the same interest as your website. Some of them will also have websites. You can communicate with them and request link exchanges. I have gotten many exchanges this way.

Swap links with me! I actively swap links with other webmasters and would welcome a swap with you. Check out my linkswap information page.