Can't do reciprocal links, Can you buy them?

Client thinks links are unprofessional...

[Newtronic]

One of my clients thinks that having a links page would be unprofessional. Actually, for her business, it would look less professional and not many of her competitors have link pages either. Think law firm or doctor. Is there another way to get links? We're doing ok with an adwords campaign, but I would like to be less dependant on that. We're of course not interested in spammy sites, or link farms or anything like that.

Thanks

[heini]

Hi Newtronic,
I do not think there's a site which can get no links. For each area on the web there are some central hubs, like business directories, local directories, even private pages, where people interested in that topic collect links, university link collections, of course the big dorectories like Yahoo, ODP etc.

Those links are generally not reciprocal. I would however recommend linking out to some places from any site.

I agree links pages are not always a good idea.
Generally I prefer having links as part of regular content.

Think about sites which are authorities in your field, or sites. Also there are complementary sits, which you could swap links with without losing visitors.
Think about what kind of links your users would benefit from. Put them in context: write useful content with useful links in them.

[awall19]

I believe having a small organized directory of similar or complimentary sites is very benificial. If you only link out the the best sites then the end user may start to associate your site with those of the highest quality.

Also having a small directory allows easy link exchange. It is somewhat arrogant to expect a bunch of people to link to a site and think the site is so good that there are no valid resources for that site to reference on the web.

[anallawalla]

To add to Heini's excellent suggestions, I'll add local (suburban) web sites if any exist for that locality. In my city we have a few of these and they feature local businesses.

If the client is a donor to some local causes, they might be amenable to setting up a links page if someone talks to their webmaster.

- Ash

[topr8]

Is there another way to get links?

after submitting to all the relevant directories that you can find i think you have 2 main opportunities ...

1) offer to sponsor sites - as this is a law firm there must be a bunch of non profit type sites that would be suitable, either geographically local or related to the kind of work the law firm does, sponsor the website in exchange for a few link backs.

2) build another website - informational of some sort and put a links directory in it, then offer a link from site "b" in exchange for a linkback to site "a"

[Jenstar]

For external links for a doctor/lawyer/etc professional site, think about linking to any professional organizations the client belongs to, to schools the client attended, or links about specialized training. These are easy ways to do some external linking, without doing the reciprocal linking thing. I agree that you should have some external links from the site.

[Newtronic]

Thanks for all the good ideas.

The professional organizations she belong to use search mechanisms to find members and the results are not "googleable"

I think the charity ideas are good.

A second informative site sounds like a good idea and I will pursue that.

Something that I looked into to add to your good ideas was the local chambers of commerce, city and county... these would have worked, but were pricey, being more expensive than Yahoo. My client is in Yahoo and does have some inbound links, but still only a PR of 2. Of course, who know what it really is given the nonchanging nature of PR these days. :)

Thanks again

[Blue Gravity]

You don't have to name the page "links" you know. You could name it something a bit more conservative, and you can make a small "Site Map" link on the bottom of the page, and only list that link page in there. It's obvious that they aren't interested in it for traffic reasons, so it really shouldn't be such a giant problem.

Of course, if they still object, just approach sites related to your client. Like others mentioned, schools, businesses etc, related to the industry of your client. Ask them to link to your client's site. Sometimes it helps to either be professional about it or personal about it. If that doesn't work, you can always offer to pay for their hosting for a month perhaps?