Are Links important?

Yes! But only to a point. Your website will benefit from links that are on-topic, provide value to your visitors and are somehow related to your site. Avoid link farming websites! Good, honest linking is the key here.

1. Set up a page for your links, don't name it 'links', rather call it favorites, related, or something similar. And make sure this page can be found, but link to it from your main page.

2. List the links you yourself like to visit, and the sites your visitors may want to visit too:
Your favorite websites,
sites that relate to your products and are complementary to your website. Link to pages that are informative to the people that browse your pages.

3. Submit your website by hand to search engines and local directories. Avoid automated linking managers.

4. Submit your website to directories.
There are some that charge a fee to include your website (i.e. Yahoo), but many others are free, like dmoz.org.
Make sure you submit to the appropriate category.

5. Carefully consider reciprocal linking.
It should make sense for both websites. Keep asking yourself, if those offered links are of interest to you and your site visitors and if you want to network with them. Reciprocal links are usually demanded by directories and high traffic sites.

6. Find out who your top competitors are and which sites link to them.
Do a search with any search engine by typing: link:www.competitor.com (in place of 'competitor' add the domain name of the site you want to check the linking) You will see the list of incoming links.

7. Visit those websites that link to your competitors sites.
Find the correct email address and ask for a link exchange. Do tell - in short - why your site deserves to be listed on their website, and compliments about their site never hurt. Don't forget to add your contact information and ask for a text link with a keyword to your site ( For handmade spa products visit mycompany.com).
Don't forget to mention the URL on which you have placed a link to their site.

8. When you place the links onto your links page, make sure the links open in a new window when clicked, that way your page stays open in the background for your visitor not to lose your site.

9. After a few weeks, check all the pages you are linking to, if they returned the favor. Keep checking periodically, if your link was taken off, send a courtesy email requesting to re-link to your site.

Your options?
Hire someone to do it for you, but this will be costly
Don't worry about it and do nothing, but don't expect any traffic
Do it yourself :-)

Reminder: Hand submitting your website to search engines and directories is included in the Maintenance Plan with Budget-WebDesign.

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Sincerely,

Evelyn Peterson

For the first Impression, there is no second Chance!