The Internet Marketing Challenge Blog

I can almost here the groans from various people who think of link exchanges as an outdated method of getting backlinks that lead to SEO traffic and direct traffic also. However, when done correctly it is a great way of getting interest from Google and will help to raise your site in the rankings. So what is the correct way of doing link exchanges? The correct way is to look for link exchanges with sites that are seen as tried and tested already by Google for your particular niche.

Here is an outline of the steps I take and then I will flesh out the bones after..

1. List out the top 10 listings on Google for your target keyword phrase.
2. Using SEO quake (firefox plugin) check out all the backlinks to each site from Yahoo and save them in a spreadsheet.
3. For each backlink domain in your spreadsheet that occurs more than once create a new list of those particular domains. TIP: Create a formula to do this for you.
4. Go through your new list of domains and look for a “submit your site” or any link that allows you to submit your site for a link exchange.
5. Fill in your details and follow the instructions on each site for providing a backlink on your own site which will involve creating a partners page or something like that. Make sure your link anchor text is the keyword phrase you used to find these authority sites.
6. After 2 weeks go through all those domains again to see if your link has been added to their site and if it hasn’t remove their link from yours.
7. Think of another target keyword phrase and repeat the steps above.

Seriously, this is a tried and trusted technique I use for getting quality backlinks from authority sites. Another important point to make is that your target keyword phrase should be targeted to 1 page on your site that is optimised for that particular phrase. You should use the link to that page as your URL when doing link exchanges. If you have to provide a link to your home page then so be it but always try to get backlinks to internal pages if possible.

If this all looks like a lot of work it is worth it but if you need a tool to do the same thing in a lot less time then Brad Callen’s SEO Elite has a great project which does exactly the steps I laid out above among many other wonderful things. I imagine many of you may already have this excellent piece of software as all serious Internet marketers should have it as part of their Arsenal in my opinion.

On it’s own this tactic will get you indexed and ranked reasonably well on Google even though you are bleeding the link love back to the site it came from but do not worry.. Alongside the other tactics coming up your site can rise to the top of the rankings for your target keywords.

My next post will go through what I call the Google Top 10 tactic..

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