Forum Moderators: martinibuster
He has about 300 different links to these different places. I told him that from what I understand, if these people that he links to would link back to him, it may help to raise his ranking.
The links are not specific to his software business, but it is specific to the industry in general. For instance, a safety device company that sells to the same industry would recommend him to his customers by linking to him.
As a neophite, I feel that this is the last unconquered frontier for me, and it still seems strange to ask your competition to add you as a link. I just haven't grasped that. But the idea of having the industry associations and others add him seems more realistic. Is this true?
I have no idea why this business is so mysterious.
This is the Reciprocal Linkage forum, and if you browse through past threads you'll find more information than you could possibly use in a year, including some great tips on how to go about asking for the reciprocal links, which a lot of people find to be the hardest part.
Definitely worth a good, thorough read through.
Let's face it, these web sites in themselves are a direct extension of our own and the "themes" (in most cases) match perfectly.
I would rather have a competitor competiting at ranked position 1 - 10 that has a link to me than 9 others that have nothing to do with me.
An online merger (web site merger) isn't that much different than an offline one.
Just make sure the link going out is of equal value to the one coming in.
Welcome to Webmaster World!
How smart is to cloak links to my competition and ask them to link back to me?
This is just me. When swapping links I verify that the other site did in fact put up a link to me. I also view the link page with Google toolbar to see what it's status is. I also look at the link structure. I also after one month repeat. I also after six months repeat. If at any time things change I email the webmaster to see why. If I do not like their response I remove the link from my site. I keep my link exchanges in an Excel spreadsheet for organization.
Jst my .02
Brian
[edited by: Marcia at 6:27 pm (utc) on Sep. 13, 2002]
[edit reason] no URLs please [/edit]
Ok, but how do you link to competition... do you cloak, do you use keywords in link, and how many of them "know what they need" from you?
We might be a little different. I do not link with DIRECT competetors but people who sell things in the same genre which I do not carry. In this case I ask them to give me a keyword laden text link. I point them to a page that I created with several logos links, text based links and let them choose which one they would prefer to use. So far it seems to work pretty good. I have one dimaond dealer who gives me almost as much traffic as some of the SEs. She states the same for me. On this we are now trying to come to terms on an afiliate exchange. I would of course come out ahead as her items are 10 fold the price that mine are ;).
Brian
But if you are in doubt, the best way to do it is to use a javascript jump menu labeled like, "Our friends." That way, you encourage traffic between the sites, but the spiders won't find them.
:) Y
