Building a solid traffic base

One of the biggest challenges on the Internet is building traffic to a new site, especially if you don't have much money for advertising. Trading links with other quality websites (reciprocal links) can be an effective way to start bringing visitors to your site.

Trading links is a good first step, but there are a few things to keep in mind while setting up link partners.

1. Look for other sites that you think would be of interest to the visitors who come to your site. (But not direct competitors of course)

2. Try to think of a link partner as a partnership where both parties will benefit. Too often webmasters think they can get by placing another site's link 10 pages deep on their site, and expect a home page link fro the other site. It just doesn't work that way. When link trades are done correctly, both sites should share traffic directly at the same time as helping both sites get noticed by the search engines.

It is important to make sure you trade links with good sites. Don't try to trade with thousands of sites that may or may not be related to your site. Especially if you have to use homepage links. Your site will end up looking like a "link farm" before long, which tarnishes your reputation as a good site.

Sometimes we have found it to work out best by paying for a text link on a good site. This way you don't have to place a reciprical link on your site, you get the benefit of a one-way link and get to retain a clean site. The key here is to not pay more than you expect the link to bring in for you. If you think the link will generate an extra $1,000 a month in sales, why not pay $200 a month for the link. It is all about returning your investment.

We stress the importance of good link building as a critical component of building solid traffic to your site.

This is a never ending process. You can never have your link on enough other related websites. If people don't know about your site, they can't find you. People learn about your site by seeing your links all over the place.