Motivations behind exchanging links

One of the common ways people start browsing on the web is by following links. This is why links are thought to drive the web. Without links, there will be no web. This is not probably an exaggerated statement. Let's we clear on what we are talking about. You can go from one page or one website to another by other means besides clicking on a link. For example, you can type the URL of the page or website you want to visit. This technique, however works in practice only for viewing the first page. For viewing additional pages, users naturally follow links from the first page. Google and other websites will not work in the same way if there were no links. Links provide the means to the user to quickly reach the page or source of interest. Imagine if we had no links but one giant web page with all the content of a website. It would be a daunting task to find the desired information this way.

To make the information easily accessible to the user, we make links. Think of links as an index in back of a book. From the index, the reader finds the topic of interest and the page location. Similarly, a link serves the same purpose as index in a book. Links guide the user to the desired source on the web. If there is no a link to your website, then, your website is unlikely to be found from anywhere. The analogy of this situation would be similar to having a no index entry in the back of the book. Without an index entry, the reader looking at the index has no way of knowing the content does exist.

Having links to your website, on the other hand, increases the chances of your website being found and visited by the potential customers or readers. So having more links and in more places will increase the chances of your website attracting more web users. If you have multiple index entries in the back of the book, the user is able to find that entry from more than one location.

Here are the main motivations why websites seek to partner with other websites to establish links:

• gain more potential readers or customers
• increase visibility in search engines. More links means better placement of your website in search results. In general, a website with quality and relevant links is placed in top of the search engines. Realize that most people only see the top 20 or so results of the search page(s). Think of the last time you searched Google or other favorite search engine. You probably did not go through all 200,000 search results &@151; did you? Most often people just see the first few search results and ignore the rest. (They also modify their search, if needed.)
• links can bring in more links as other link managers see links on the page. If you have a link page on your website, this is encouraging to the link manager to request a link to your website. Again, this grows your link, if you choose to establish a link. So having links drives in more link requests.
• links help website become popular

Figure 1 shows you how links increase traffic to your website. As people see a link to your website in search engines, on GiantPile, and other websites, it will help your website to attract more potential users. This in return will improve your online business.

Figure 1 Increasing exposure of your website

Keep these points in mind when you request or receive a link request. If you are receiving a link request, your task is easy because an experienced link requester probably has done his/her homework for you. In other words, the link requester visited your website. Consequently, she knows your website is an appropriate choice to add as links to her website. The fact that she is contacting you for a link indicates she won't link to your website unless you also return the favor. Remember before she contacted you, she probably had to go through many other websites that were not deemed appropriate.

One gets a better sense of this process by playing the role of a link requestor. With the role, you visit each website and evaluate each website to your linking cretiera. Most websites in the process will likely not match your criteria. So you won't consider contacting them because the chance of a link swap is low. Remember a link request does not guarantee a link. So bulk emailing to random email addresses will not yield any links (or just a few) but emailing to many targeted websites will probably be more fruitful.

If you choose to not exchange links and are interested in gaining more traffic to your website, you are likely to pay one or all of the programs mentioned in listing 1