9 Near Fatal Flaws Most Links Pages Suffer From And How To Avoid Them

Trading links is critical to online success. Yet most links pages are defective!

The worst ones can have nine near fatal flaws.

How does yours stack up?

As a veteran link exchanger I've spent countless hours infront of my monitor. Like a Vegas slots player hoping to hit thejackpot, err, I meant to say looking for prime candidates. So I qualifyto spell out fatal flaws all too many links pages suffer from.

Make it Easy to Connect the Dots

By that I mean make it easy to trade links. Would it kill youto put instructions right on your links page? Or at least link to theadd URL page?

Along the same lines:

Tell Me What You Want

Do us both a favor and supply your link text. Both what it looks like and the HTML version to cut and paste.

Yeah, I can pull it from the links page I found you on. But why make me work?

Don't Treat Contact Info Like Buried Treasure

You'd think some webmasters were in the witness protectionprogram they make it so hard to find where to email. Put which emailaddress to use or the link to your contact page in plain view.

Do I Qualify?

Don't make me guess. List any qualifying criteria you have. Forinstance if you'll only trade links with certain types of sites or thelinks page must have so much PR - say so.

Be a Specialist

Avoid trying to be all things to all people. Doesn't bring youtargeted traffic. Doesn't send such link partners targeted traffic.Trade links with like minded sites and all will be better off.

Use Categories

Set up your links page to be truly useful rather than like aball lost in tall weeds. In other words don't just throw up a laundrylist of listings. My eyes glaze over when I see a long unorganizedroster of 63 sites. Who's gonna sift through that to find what theyneed?

This Ain't No Yellow Pages

Avoid a multi-page directory. Why? It costs PR for each level down you go.

You see if your directory page is a PR 5, each links page in another folder will at best be a PR 4.

So it's better to have an index on the same page as all thelinks. Ideally with internal page jumps that take visitors to theappropriate category. With another back to the top.

Don't Pass Go or 100 Links Per Page

The googlebot gets tired. 100 links on a page is all it will follow. Be fair. Don't shortchange anyone by exceeding that.

As you approach 65 links create a second links page. Just besure to put the link to that on all your pages too. So you'redistributing PR to any subsequent links pages just as you did for thefirst one.

Let Me Know

Just like some guys don't call after the first date, somewebmasters never reply to a link exchange request. Was it something Isaid?

We're ALL busy. Please give all link inquiries THAT QUALIFYthe courtesy of a reply. Or else say on your links page you're nolonger trading links.

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