Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 4th January 2008
An easy tactic to improve your Google rankings
One of the golden rules of link building is to make your links look natural. Search engines are generally doing a good job of discounting links that look manufactured. An old strategy is to create a links page and link to partner sites from this page in return for a similar link from the partner. Search engines can detect this and you will do much better by being a little more creative.
One terrific way is to use reciprocal "content" links - here's how it works:
Email sites or people you want to trade links with and offer to link to a piece of content on their website - an article, a buying guide, a blog post - that you particularly liked. In exchange, ask them not to just give you any old link, but to find something they like on your site and point to that from somewhere - anywhere - on their site.
You get a link profile that looks natural and organic, and you're getting a link of similar value with less risk of discovery and devaluation by search engines.