Link Strategy

Links to improve page rank or links for readers benefit.

[Perplexed]

Well, Iv'e been reading through this forum and I am getting more and more confused.

I want inbound links to help more people to find my site.... But I dont want to end up with pages and pages of recip links that have little meaning or use to anyone. A long page of links is immediatly apparent as a device rather than a resource.

I run an information site for collectors and it would be appropriate for me to list sites that sell the things my readers collect but I want to go further than that ( I think ) I picture a "page" of links with my readers sending in comments about their experiences with these sellers that can be attached to the link profile ( a bit like the feedback on ebay ) this will hopefully set up a "Trust Ratio" for my readers who have not bought from a particular dealer before.

Questions are...
1... Can I gey people to link one way?

2... Would dealers come to me to be added to the list and "risk" what their customers will say about them. Would it be a turn on... or a turn off?

[stever]

Hi Perplexed

I think you are talking about becoming a resource for your community. If you look at the webhosting world, this is quite a valid web model, with customer service reviews for the user - and suppliers applying to be listed on the site.

I would think that - given enough valuable content in terms of real and valuable customer reviews - your site would have enough value that people would start to link to it as a resource (or that you could approach people in related industries to see if they would wish to link to you).

In answer to your second question, if you have enough traffic, dealers would be stupid not to come to your site.

A personal prejudice that I have here, is people selling placement in a directory like this - which is quite common. Personally speaking I would rather see free placement supplemented by paid advertisements once the traffic has grown enough - it gives more of an air of legitimacy for me.

[buckworks]

If you have useful or entertaining content, effectively presented, you can get one-way links. Be prepared to do some link trading as part of your mix, but sometimes it works to simply invite someone to link to you. The key is doing enough research to find sites that would consider your content to be of value for their visitors, then writing an intelligent letter.

After a while you'll start getting a snowball effect, because as your site becomes known you'll start getting links "from the wild" too. It's always a delight to discover one of those in the logs!