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Discussed below is a point-by-point summary
of the advantages of building a substantial
link network. For sites that serve a market
of enthusiasts, like sports or a hobby, or
are in an industry that has a large number
of resource or directory sites, like
careers, then linking should be the
foundation of the site traffic.
Each of these benefits is quite powerful,
but when taken together they produce a
powerful advantage which will place your
website ahead of the others in your specific
web category. The increased web traffic that
will result is the true return on your
website marketing investment. Because many
of these advantages have never been exposed,
please read them carefully, and take time to
reflect on their true meaning:
Value: The "cost per click" of a
reciprocal link actually decreases with
every click. If it initially costs $1 to get
a link (on average), then the cost per click
for that link becomes less than 1 cent once
you’ve received just 100 visitors from that
link. And it just keeps going down
indefinitely.
Cost Protection: Traffic from
reciprocal links is immune from increased ad
costs due to traffic spikes or bidding wars.
A traffic spike on Overture, the largest
pay-per-click search engine, might be a
welcome result, but it also costs more
money. A traffic spike from a reciprocal
link, or even a steady increase due to
ordinary web traffic growth, is free with
links.
Reliability: Reciprocal links
continue to drive traffic, even if your
marketing budget get stretched thin. If you
stop paying Overture or Google Ad-Words,
they stop sending traffic, which is a very
vulnerable position.
Search Result Enhancement: As long as
there are free search engines, many of them
will reward you for being "popular", as well
as for being a "hub", which is a
representation of the number of links going
out of your site, a commonly overlooked
fact. Search engine results tend to improve
dramatically for sites that implement "GOOD"
linking practices, both in and out.
True Network Effect: Reciprocal links
are a widely-distributed source of traffic.
They are not reliant upon a single point of
control, as are many other sources of
traffic, like search engines. Links
represent a "fail-safe" network. They are
protected from the ever-changing criteria
and consolidation of the free search
engines, and they are sheltered from the
competitive attacks that are now taking
place with the pay-per-click bidding wars.
Stability: Reciprocal links are
extremely stable, in the aggregate. Sure,
you'll lose some links over time, but by and
large, they tend to stay in place
indefinitely, providing traffic day after
week after month after year.
Publicity: The very act of asking for
the link from another site is equivalent to
an industry-specific press release, but the
payoff here can be long term. You never know
what will come your way from making your
market aware, especially if your product is
new or unique. In fact, a legitimate link
request to sites that solicit for them is
the ONLY way to announce yourself via email
to a highly-targeted group of sites in your
industry, without "spamming".
Branding: The more links you have,
the greater the "branding" effect for your
name. This broad awareness can improve the
click-through-ratio for your links. At the
least, it makes surfers curious as to why
your site name seems to show up everywhere.
Traffic Driver: A well-structured
links page can actually be used to bring
people back to your site. It is a resource
to your visitors, and they will come back to
it again and again.
Providing links to other sites is not a net traffic
drain. This line of thinking is simply
flawed, for a variety of reasons. The
benefits of linking far outweigh the
occasional click out of your site by people
who are ready to leave. A well-designed
links page opens all of the outgoing links
in a new browser window, leaving your site
open on the users machine.
Market Intelligence: Reciprocal link
traffic patterns reveal many of the real
"players" in an industry. This info,
extracted from your site referral logs, can
be used to your advantage in other ways,
such as for placing banners or finding good
affiliates and marketing partners.
Minimal Oversight: Unlike
pay-per-click search engines and banner ads,
links take only limited management time once
they are in place. This is the opposite of
pay-per-click, because when you are spending
money for each click, you need to constantly
stay on top of both your bids and your
volume. That is a hidden but very real cost
of pay-per-click banners and ads.
Asset Value: Reciprocal links are
assets of the business. Like the bricks of a
house, a few don't amount to much, but pile
them up, and you have a rock-solid
foundation and structure. They can greatly
enhance the equity value of a website.
That last item (Asset Value) is so
important...please read it again.
Affordability: The traffic that comes
from established links is essentially free,
but earning those links is not. It takes
time and money to build a link network. For
the most part, building links is an upfront
cost, and should be viewed as a capital
investment in site marketing that is
immediately deductible for accounting
purposes.
For established web marketers who already
use extensive banner programs or bid
competitively on popular terms with the
pay-per-click search engines, you'll find
the cost of an entire reciprocal linking
project to be just a fraction of your
monthly click budget. In comparative terms,
reciprocal linking is a remarkably
affordable short-term expense with long-term
benefits.
For those who do not yet spend money for
online advertising, the investment in links
may very well save you from having to
institute other ad programs to get traffic.
There is nothing else in web marketing that
can compare to the long term advantages of
links.
Web marketing costs are now on the rise.
Specifically, pay-per-click search engine
bidding has become fiercely competitive.
Affiliate programs are wrought with problems
of their own. Linking is a stable,
affordable shelter from the storm, and it
works.
Audette Internet Solutions can get you on
your way with a linking program faster than
you can do it yourself. We can set up
your reciprocal linking manually for a six
month period and then transfer it over to a
"self-running" system requiring only minimal
attention on your part. We make it easy for
you.
Please
let us show you what sets us apart from all
the others. |
