Life as I find it

I will be devoting posts to article submissions and other stuff, so this one is focussed on link exchanges.

1. Look at your site carefully. What is your impression of it? What are the sites you really wish are yours?
2. Add links to those desired sites anyway, and request for an exchange.
3. When you request for an exchange, be sure to offer something that appeals to the webmaster - for example: “I have an interesting article about a rare kind of widget you have mentioned on your site while the tables you speak of on your site will nicely complement another page I have on interior decoration” And you go ahead and link to those tables and hope and pray that he links to that rare widget.
4. Many well established sites have scores of link exchange offers everyday, so be prepared for a refusal. Let your link be there, and let the webmaster be aware of those referrals coming. Write a better article which helps the subject of their site and approach again. Regardless of whether they ever link to you, you have served your readers welll by pointing them to excellent information
5. For other sites (the non-worshipped ones) request link exchanges and see where they go. Try and find content you would happily send visitors off to (and they remember that you keep showing them nice places and keep returning) also find something on their site which will be enhanced with a link to yours.
6. Do the regular “will you exchange links with me” scene to some extent if you can’t resist, though you really shouldn’t be needing it after a while if you are persistent with working for your links.
7. Save time on quantity and spend it on quality and have fun too. Research the subjects related with your site and learn more, find information of interest to trigger ideas for content, and come across excellent sites and request them for links. The way I see it, if you come across one or two sites once in a while and link with them, it is better than spamming every site that turns up in a search with requests and adding links that will not only take away your visitors, but take them away to unremarkable sites.
8. Link exchanges are overrated. They don’t really add much to SEO unless they are in some way “different” However, well managed exchanges will help the flow of happy visitors and keep them coming back to find really relevant content and links.
9. As a rule of thumb, be a snob. Do you really admire a certain site? If not, it isn’t really worth spending a link on.
10. Of course, feel free to have a nice spammy links page for directories that will not list without a reciprocal. Even better, create a section for them, so that it becomes useful to people looking for such link exchanges on your subject.

Cheers!