You asked, the WebPro delivers. Today's issue, on linking strategies, is a direct result of a recent surge in your feedback. If there's anything specific you'd like to read more about, get your requests in soon - the editorial calendar is practically filled for November!

On a more frightening note, I live in a pretty small town, which was why it was such a shock to find a reenactment of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" parading down my street last Sunday night. A local dance troupe organized the resurrection, complete with slobbering ghouls and a pickup truck blaring the cobwebbed 80's hit.

The only problem? There were so many people mobbing the streets I couldn't see the ghouls dancing!

Needless to say, Mecca, the dance studio, garnered some much-needed publicity (the local news covered the event), and brought in a youngish
college crowd, all of who will remember Mecca as the group who reenacted "Thriller."

You bet this exposure will come in handy when Mecca puts on their annual Belly Dance performance this winter.

Show me your holiday-related marketing ideas! I'll put your link right here, for all the world to click.

Have a great Halloween,
Garrett

3 Complete Linking Strategies
By Robin Nobles, Eric Ward,
and John Alexander

Complete Strategy #1:

Here is my list, in order of tactical importance:

• First, build a content rich site, narrow in scope [say half a dozen high potential keywords, with a smattering of less important but still related kw's].
• Then, contact other sites that have the same scope as yours does, and ask for a reciprocal link [after you have already linked to them, of course!]. If you build a site that is content rich, informative, and above all else has unique content, then all your peers will beat a path to your door, asking you for a link!
• Get your site listed at Yahoo [yes, it does force you to yank out your wallet, but it IS one of the best links you can get]. Do the research necessary to find the most appropriate category [which is where the Link Relevancy comes from], and get that title and description optimized!
• Get into the ODP. Do the same research as you did at Yahoo for the best category.
• Find out which of the thousands of specialty SE's and directories that your site is a good fit for, and submit to them.
• After you are done with 1 - 5, build another content rich site, and on this one, concentrate on your next batch of kw's. Cross link the home pages. Repeat.
• Even though blogging is all the rage these days, I think it will go the way of link farms in the not-too-distant future, especially if/when the SE's determine that it is just another case of spamming. We are staying away from it, and concentrating on the 6 tactics above.
• Of much less importance is cross linking within each of your individual sites. I have gotten away from heavy cross linking, relying instead on good site maps [which addresses spiderability, not link pop]. (Rocky Rawstern with 7th Wave)

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Complete Strategy #2:

Like Links:

• Step 1: Identify useful linkages. If you're a Web developer, break your clients (or willing contacts from the industry) into relevant linked groups: e.g. realtors, travel and tourism, technology companies.
• Step 2: category-page.html. Build a link list for each group (one for realtors, one for travel and tourism, etc.), plain html, listing a keyword-relevant title for each description which links to the site for each client, with one or two paragraphs about the site. Example:

"Travel accommodations and resorts in Australia"

Save this page as say, travel-sites.html, and perhaps to remember where it lives easily, and make it easily updateable, save it in a directory like www.yourclientsite.com/accommodations/travel-sites.html

• Step 3: Make each of the pages different within each site.

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Now apply your site template for each site in the list, to that raw html page, (in other words cut and paste the list into a blank version of one of your existing pages for each site and save it as /accommodations/travel-sites.html) so that you have different look, feel and byte size, for each of the pages built, in line with the look of each site. This will stop most SE's viewing pages as duplicate content when in fact what you're validly doing is provided useful related links to other resources on the Web.

• Step 4: Make a site-map.html. Build a site map within every site in the above list, if you haven't already. In each site, have the site map linking to every internal page, set out like the one above, with at least a one paragraph description of what is on the page, with relevant keywords, which is also useful to humans. Hyperlink the main keyword/phrase to the pages within your site. Also include a link to the above link page (/accommodations/travel-sites.html) which lists all the other related sites. Save the site map as something like site-map.html.
• Step 5: Make a link to the site map from each home page.

On your home (index/default) page include a link to the site-map.html page.

• Step 6: Submit to search engines. Submit your home page to major SE's if it hasn't been submitted in a while. So now you have a link to a site map on your home page, with that site map listing one paragraph descriptions and hyperlinks to all the pages in your site, including your new accommodations/travel-sites.html (which now looks just like the rest of your pages in the site).

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This simple 6-step process is a popularity and relevancy boost for ALL the sites you have on the travel-sites.html list. Firstly, from the home page on each site, SE spiders and humans now have access to relevant descriptive links to all pages in your site and other related sites. They have the addition of some useful "related resource" information within the site content using the travel-sites.html page. And most importantly, they have "x" more relevant sites as incoming links. If all the sites are full of valid and unique topic-related content, you've built a nice little interlinked network of sites for very little effort. And with a resubmission to the major SE's of this new content, you should see some increased results within 3 months when checking link relevancy. (Carl Watney with Unearthed)

Complete Strategy #3:

Begin a Link Exchange Campaign to create high quality content, high PageRank links to your site by utilizing the following steps, in order:

1. Create a links or resources page on your site

2. Establish a list of at least 50 related but non-competing, high quality content sites with a high Google PageRank that you would like to exchange links with by doing the following:

1. Download Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com) to be able to establish PageRank grading for the sites that come up in the following search results
2. Do searches on Google for:

- terms that will show search results displaying sites that relate to your own site, but are not direct competitors

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Check out these sites, one by one, beginning with the ones listed first in the search results, for quality content, non-competitiveness, and Web master’s e-mail address, and note down in a list the sites that meet these criterion, recording as well the site’s title and description from the homepage source code

- terms that will show search results displaying sites that directly compete with your own site

- terms that will show search results displaying sites that directly compete with your own site

Beginning with the ones listed first in the Google search results, check out each site with a linking tool (e.g. of tool, go to http://chatologica.com.) Click on Web Site Popularity Check at the bottom of the page to establish what sites link to theirs, and make a list of these linking sites. Then check out each of these sites that are linked to your direct competitor for quality content, non-competitiveness, and Web master’s e-mail address, and note down on the same list you began in b., the sites that meet these criterion, recording as well the site’s title and description from the homepage source code. (Chris Genge with 1st on the List Promotion Inc.)

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Sample Link Exchange Letter

Be very clear with your request for reciprocal linking. After you have
thoroughly researched a potential site to ensure they are appropriate and
actually do have links to other sites, consider the following:

• Start with a very brief description of your site's content and how it
  relates to their site.
• Provide the exact URL of their page you think the link would be most beneficial. Show them that you've actually visited the site and given some
  thought to the link.
• Finally, give the HTML code for the link so the Webmaster can cut and paste it directly into his page code. That gives you some control over the link placement and lets you include your keywords into the link text.

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For information about advertising within an iEntry email newsletter or via a targeted direct emailing contact Susan Coppersmith at susan@ientry.com.