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In
Part I of Link Trading we discussed the reasons and basic practice of creating content pages for exchange instead of a simple trade of links.
In this part I offer some tips on creating the articles you'll use for exchanging and some ideas on how to optimize the results you'll obtain in trading links.
Start With What You Have To begin, start with what you already have.
Take a look at articles you already have written and see if you might adapt these for use in the trading process.
One of the easiest ways is taking a simple article and split it in two parts each of which will stand on its own then offer part one
as your link-in page to be published on other sites, and reserve part two as
your landing page used exclusively on your site. You will also publish part one on your own site, but you can now have a natural lead from your first article to your site by saying "Continued in part two ...(links to your site)." That's the approach demonstrated in this article.
Choose Sites For Exchange With Care You'll want to choose the sites where you offer your pages for exchange with care.
Obviously you're not going to offer an article on choosing and buying fresh endive greens, to a site which is specializing in Motocross sports. What you might do, however, is make part one of your article a bit more generalized than your second part, because you have a wider audience to offer it to.
That is, you will offer basically the same article to a number of different sites.
To use the example of choosing and buying fresh endive greens, you might instead make part one something like "how to find dealers who will help you choose and buy the best supplies for your business."
Next, when you are writing your article --especially the first part-- you will want to use all the techniques and strategies you can muster to pre sell the reader in following through to part two.
If you're not sure that you're completely up to snuff in this department
Make Your Content Pre Sell
is an excellent primer which goes far beyond link trading.
Publishing On Your Own Site When you
publish Part Two on your own web site, you will include a link back to Part One
because, occasionally your reader may want to check back on something they read
earlier. The link will go to the Part One which is on YOUR SITE, not on the site where the reader came from.
At the end of your Part Two, or whatever you use as your landing page for the incoming links, you want to be certain you have at the very least a link that will entice your visitor to go to other pages on your site.
Depending on the nature of your landing page, you may also have links to affiliate partners
or other wanted responses from your visitors. Much of how you approach link trading depends greatly on the approach you use for your entire site.
Link-Out Pages
There are several things you want to do when you publish an exchange or
link-out page.
Of course you will honor your link trading agreement and publish the article offered including the links to the site you've exchanged with, but you will also want to edit the article so that it does as much or more for you as it does for the person who wrote the article.
You might be tempted to group several articles on one page. Don't.
You'll get far greater mileage by optimising the keywords and publishing
separate pages.
- Start by finding the single most important keyword in the article, and use this as your primary keyword when you build the page.
- Next, weave that keyword into your Meta Title in the page header.
- Use that keyword in a headline to the page, if it has not already been included in a headline to the article provided by the author.
- Name your html file that will contain the article, using the same major keyword.
All of these keyword optimizing techniques are in preparation for submitting this page to major search engines once you have it published.
Readers who are familiar with
Site Build It
, of course recognize that these steps are an integral part of the process and that, together with the fact that SBI automatically takes care of the search engine submissions makes it a breeze to use these steps.
If you don't have SBI, you'll have to do all these steps manually, and while it is tedious, it is essential to having link trading pay off for you.
Other Link Trading Suggestions
Apart from keyword optimization and SE submission, you'll probably want to include a few other things in the page where the article is written.
Some suggestions:
- one or more links to other pages on your site which are related to the article
- links to affiliate partners which might relate to the article theme
- advertising
- NavBars and other site design elements which make it easy for a visitor
to stay on your site and visit other parts.
Link Trading In Review
What you need for an optimal link trading program to
work for you are
- your link-in or exchange article which will pre sell readers on the
idea of visiting your site and reading more of what you have to say
- a second part or landing page for the incoming links which will lead
the visitor even more into being happy they followed the link inward.
- Optimize your link-out or exchange pages by using titles and headlines
that the article writer may not have provided
- Design the page where link-out articles are published to make it easy
for a reader to stay on your site
- Submit the link-out page to search engines as another content page for
your site.
Use these ideas with a sprinkle of your own imagination and
you'll find your traffic and web site credibility growing by leaps and
bounds with link trading.
Multi-Win Scenario
This is a win-win-win-win situation.
- The visitor (the most important winner) gets valuable content at every
stage of their visits to your site and your exchange partners.
- The search engines visit useful content pages and the links they follow
also lead to more content
- Your exchange partner gains (and if you share this page with them they
will gain considerably more by optimizing their part as you do).
- You gain presold traffic coming into your site and relevant rating points
in search engine listings.
Share this information with your link exchange partner. Give them
the URL to this article (www.affiliate-master.com/link-trading.html).
You'll lose nothing from the gesture but will contribute to an enriched internet
for everyone who uses it.
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