In our last article, we talked about a free way to generate traffic and potentially boost the search engine ranking of your website in the process. Today, we will continue in that vein by analyzing another popular, generally free tactic that can help promote your website and that can frequently be accomplished without any – or at least not much – financial outlay on your part: link trading.
Link trading is exactly what it sounds like: you trade off posting links on your site in exchange for someone else posting your links on their site. For example, say that you have a real estate investing website that you use to find motivated sellers interested in selling their homes via lease-option with no money down. You might want to contact the owner of a website that specializes in educational materials about lease-options to see if he or she would consider posting your link on their site if you post a link to their site on yours. The result is that both of you get your website links in front of audiences who may be useful, and you also get the added boost of having a link to your site on a relevant website.
Some people are really good at link trading and experience great success with it. However, it can also turn into a colossal waste of time if you fail to present your case in such a way that the person to whom you are proposing the trade sees it as a benefit to them. This is not because the concept itself does not work, but because it can get very time consuming to contact people and try to establish a trading relationship that is effective. Many new website owners and promoters simply email everyone that has a website relevant to theirs that is ranked higher than theirs in the search engines and hope that someone will post their links. However, in this scenario, they have little leverage to trade with because a link of their site will not be nearly as valuable as a link on their trade-target’s site.
To make this tactic work for you, figure out what it is that you offer someone to whom you are proposing the trade. Once you have pinpointed this facet of the deal, then write what amounts to a sales letter explaining why you want to do the trade and where you would want your link to be located. In time, you may find an argument and proposal that works for you and find great SEO success with link trading.
Do you trade links? What unique approach do you use that makes it work for you?
Thank you for reading! Your comments and questions are welcomed below.