Marketing_Guy - 3:21 pm on Mar 25, 2003 (gmt 0)

A small thing ive noticed over the past few months, is that as your site starts to develop presence and exposure, it is much easier to get people to link to you.

But you find yourself spending more time in communication with larger sites negotiation exchanges that will have more of an impact on your site.

For example, I could knock together a small email to request a link exchange with a site in a matter of minutes.

But I recently spent several weeks negotiating a link / content / ad exchange with a single site. The site is now my top non-SE refer.

Regardless of the traffic from the site, the exposure my branding is getting will be good for my site in the long term.

The point is that there are things that you can do that are easily quantifible. A link from a PR5 page will have xxx impact / my time is worth xxx / i can spend xxx hours a week doing this / etc.

But there are also things you can do that aren't as tangible - branding / exposure / consumer awareness /etc.

A good marketing strategy (which will include your linking strategy) should take into account both.

They both go hand in hand to create a successful long term business.

Scott :)