The Market Coalition

1. Offer other web sites free content to post on their web site. Include your link on all of your content. The content should related to your web site because it will be in front of your target audience.

2. When you visit a web site you’ve enjoyed a lot, write a review for the site. Write about the benefits you gain from the web site. Tell them they can publish it on their web site if they link to your web site.

3. Allow other people to publish your e-zine on their web site. Include your web site’s ad and link in each issue you publish. This may also help you increase the number of people that subscribe to your e-zine.

4. Market your web site as a free web book. Design your web site with a title page, table of contents, chapters, etc. Just allow other people to give away the web book by linking to your web site.

5. Give your visitors an instant article directory. Tell your visitors they can instantly add a free article directory to their web site by linking to yours. Just place your ad or banner ad on top of the article directory for your main web site.

6. Allow other web sites to use your discussion board for their web site visitors. Just have them link directly to the discussion board. Include your web sites ad or banner ad at the top of the discussion board.

7. Start a members only web site. Tell visitors what’s in your members only site and what it costs to gain access. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.

8. Offer your visitors a free sign up to your affiliate program. Pay them commission to sell your products or services. Just give them an affiliate link to track their sales. People will link to your web site to make extra money.

9. Create your own award site for other web sites. Give the winners a graphic or text link to place on their web site when they win. This will link your web site to theirs and draw more traffic to your web site.

10. Are you an expert on a particular subject? Offer people free consulting via e-mail if, in exchange, they either link to your site. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.

11. When you purchase a product and it exceeds your expectations e-mail the business a testimonial. Make sure your statement is detailed. Give them permission to publish it on their web site if they link to your site.

12. Create a directory of web sites on a specific topic. Give people the option of adding the directory to their web site by linking to it. Put your business ad at the top of the directory’s home page.

13. Exchange content with other web sites. You could trade articles, top ten lists, etc. Both parties could include a resource box at the end of the content.

14. Allow people to download software at no charge from your web site, if they link to your web site. The software could be freeware, shareware or demos.

15. Trade other forms of advertising to people that link to your web site. You could trade e-zine ads, print ads, autoresponder ads, classified ads, ebook ads, etc.

16. Give away web space to people for free. Since you are giving it away for free, request they link to your site by placing your ad or banner to the site.

17. Join or create a web ring. A web ring is a group of web sites on a similar subject agreeing to link together. To find a web ring to join type keywords “web rings” into your search engine of choice.

18. Create an online club or association. Tell your visitors what’s included in the membership and what it costs to join. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.

19. Allow people to use an online service or utilities from your web site if, in exchange, they link to your web site. The online service could be an e-mail account, search engine submission, web page design, copywriting, proofreading, etc.

20. Offer a free e-book to your web site visitors. The ebook should be related to your target audience. Allow them to give the e-book to their own web site visitors by linking directly to your web site.

Last week I was doing a search in Google under ‘ezine advertising’ and was amazed to find one of my own websites on the first page of results (position #4 out of 271,000).

So then I went to Yahoo and got another shock - there it was again at position #4 out of 274,000 results.

If you’re wondering how I did it, the answer is I’m not entirely sure.

But my guess is *link popularity*.

What is link popularity?

Some years ago the major search engines realized that the best way to decide if your website has valuable content (and is therefore worth a high ranking) is to see how many other websites link to your site.

Link popularity was pioneered by Google but has now become a key factor in the algorithms used by most of the major search engines.

Would you like to know your current link popularity?

Here’s a free tool that will check your link popularity in Alltheweb, AltaVista, AOL, Google, HotBot and MSN. This tool will also compare your link popularity with your competitors’: http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

Now that you know your link popularity, you may be wondering how you can increase it.

Here are some commonly used strategies - some effective and some not:

==> FFA Sites

Free For All sites are websites that collect your email address (and send you a lot of junk email) and in return allow you to post a link on a website.

FFA sites are rather like a conveyor belt - new links are constantly being added and old links being pushed off. On Many FFA sites your link will last an hour or two at the most.

Even if your link stayed on an FFA site long enough to be indexed by a search engine, it is unlikely it would increase your link popularity. Search engines regard FFA sites as spam and they’ll either ignore your link or penalize your site.

==> Link Exchange Programs

As with FFA sites, you need to ask yourself the same question the search engines ask.

Did someone link to your site because you have valuable content? Or did they link to your site as part of a mutual ploy to artificially raise each other’s link popularity?

The search engines know how to tell the difference and some of them (Google for example) will actually ban your site for engaging in ‘link farming’.

Another problem with this method is *link relevancy*. If the sites linking to you have content that is not related to your content, the search engines will not give much weight to those links.

==> Reciprocal Links with Individual Webmasters

This will definitely increase your link popularity, especially if you seek out link partners whose websites share the same theme as yours.

But this approach is time consuming - first you have to surf around looking for potential link partners, then you have to email them, then you have to confirm that they added your link and so on.

==> Writing Articles

This is the technique I use for increasing link popularity and it works very well.

Write short articles of 300 - 800 words and then submit them to the article announcement lists and the online article banks.

There are thousands of webmasters out there who need free content for their websites and you’ll soon find your articles appearing on dozens, even hundreds, of different websites.

At the bottom of your article is your Resource Box containing a link to your website. It might look something like this:

—————————————————————– ——— John Doe is the webmaster of yourdomain.com where he offers cutting-edge tips on all aspects of web marketing. To find more advice, tools and resources to help you succeed in online business, visit: http://www.yourdomain.com —————————————————————– ———

Most webmasters will make the URL in your Resource Box an active link. If they don’t, you should insist on it because it’s part of the deal - they get free content for their website and you get a free link.

This technique has two important advantages over other methods of raising link popularity:

(1) You don’t have to clutter up your website with reciprocal links

(2) You don’t have to invest huge amounts of time searching for link partners and then emailing them to request a link. If they like your article, they just add it to their website.

Happy writing!

(c) 2002 by Michael Southon

“Middle Class Corruption” (IN DEDICATION TO MY BROTHER LENNY R. LEDET)

It depicts a little boy growing up in a middle class environment, having his childhood taken away by the “Laws of Deception”, (from being served as an adult, to being incarcerated already having served 7 to 8 years of a 30 year sentencing- for a crime he didn’t genuinely commit, to false imprisonment relating to his case dismissal prior to sentencing) to Becoming a Highly Intelligent and Very, Well Educated Black Man during his judicial process, and “How the Criminal System Changed Him Without Corrupting Him”.

Link popularity, i.e. the number of sites which are linking to your site, is an increasingly important factor as far as search engine placement is concerned. Other things remaining the same, more the number of links to your site, higher will be its ranking.

What is important is not only the number of links to your site, but also the types of sites which are linking to you. A link from a site which is related to yours is more valuable than a link from an unrelated site.

In this article, I explore different methods by which you can improve the link popularity of your site. I start with a method that you shouldn’t bother using, then go on to the moderately effective methods, and then end with the most effective methods you can use to boost the link popularity of your site.

1) Submitting your site to Free For All (FFA) pages

A common misconception among many Internet marketers is that while FFA pages may not directly bring in traffic to your site, it will help to improve the link popularity of your site, and hence, will indirectly bring in traffic through the search engines.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Most FFA pages can contain only a certain number of links at a time. This means that when you submit your site to a FFA page, your site will be placed at the top of the page. However, as more and more people submit their sites to the FFA page, your site will be pushed down, and finally, when it reaches the bottom of the page, it will be removed.

Now, since you can bet that plenty of other people are also submitting their sites to the FFA pages, your site will remain in these pages for only a short span of time. Hence, in order to ensure that the search engines see your site if and when they come to spider the FFA page, you will need to ensure that you submit your site to these FFA pages on a regular basis - at least once a week.

Even if you used an automatic submission program to do it, can you imagine a worse way to spend your time and/or money? Furthermore, many search engines recognize these pages which only contains links to other sites as FFA pages and may completely ignore them. And while I haven’t yet seen any evidence that submitting to the FFA pages will actually penalize your site, there is every possibility that this might happen in the future.

Hence, when it comes to FFA pages, my advice is simple: don’t even think about them.

2) Starting an Awards Program

A moderately effective method of improving the link popularity of your site is to start an awards program. You can have web sites which are related to yours apply for an award from your site. The sites which win the award get the chance to display the logo for your award. This logo is linked to your site, preferably to a page which contains more information on the award.

If you publish a newsletter, consider declaring the winners in your newsletter. You can also perform a review of the winners’ sites in your newsletter. This adds useful content to your newsletter and also gives more webmasters the incentive to apply for your award, since you may review their sites in your newsletter. This also gives them the incentive to subscribe to your newsletter to see if they win the award.

Make sure that you give awards to only those sites which deserve to win. If you give your award to sites which don’t deserve it, your award will have little credibility, which will, in turn, hurt the credibility of your company. Furthermore, make sure that the logo you design for the award looks professional. If it doesn’t, not many webmasters will want to display it in their sites.

3) Giving testimonials

This may sound a bit unusual, but giving testimonials for products or services which you find useful can be another moderately effective way of improving the link popularity of your site. If you really like a product, simply write to the company and tell them why you liked the product so much and how it has helped you. Chances are, the company will write back to you to thank you for your comments and will ask you for permission to display your comments in their web site. Tell the company that you have no problems if they publish your comments, but request them to add a link to your site along with the testimonial. There is every possibility that the company will agree since publishing the URL of your web site gives more credibility to the testimonial.

Of course, please don’t go about giving testimonials to every company you can locate just because it will improve your link popularity

4) Posting to Message Boards and Discussion Lists

Another moderately effective method of increasing the link popularity of your site is to post to online message boards. At the end of every message that you post, you can sign off by mentioning your name and the URL of your web site. If the message board allows it, you can even include a short promotional blurb about your site at the end of your posts. However, make sure that the individual messages that are posted to that message board are archived in static HTML pages (i.e. the URLs for the individual messages should not contain a “?”). Otherwise, the search engines will consider these pages to be dynamic pages and may not spider these pages and hence, will not be able to find your link.

Email based discussion lists which are archived on the web in static HTML pages can also be used to boost the link popularity of your site in a similar manner. In this case, the signature file that you use with your email program should contain the URL for your web site.

5) Starting a Link Contest

A good method of improving the link popularity of your site is to give away prizes to other webmasters if they link to you. The prizes that you give out should ideally be something which other webmasters will find valuable enough to want to link to you, but which do not cost you too much. For instance, if you publish a newsletter, and have unsold ad inventory, you can give away some free advertisements in your newsletter to the winners. If you sell a software (or an ebook), you can give away a free copy of your software or ebook to the winners, since it doesn’t cost you anything to produce an additional copy of digital goods like software and ebooks.

Link contests work best if you run the contest on a continuous basis and if you declare new winners frequently. If you run the contest for a few months, and then stop it, the webmasters who had linked to you will all remove their links. However, if you run it on a continuous basis, and declare new winners every month or so, the webmasters will have the incentive to keep their links to your site.

Also, make sure that you require all participants to have a link to your site either in their home page, or in an internal page of their site which is linked to their home page. Also ensure that the page which contains the link is no more than two levels deep from their home page (i.e. it should not take more than two clicks to go from the home page to the page containing the link). If they don’t do this, the search engine spiders may not index the page which contains the link to your site, and hence, may not find your link.

6) Writing articles and allowing them to be re-published

This is by far one of the best ways of improving the link popularity of your site, and one of my favorites. Whenever I write an article on search engine placement, I first publish it in my newsletter and then I publish the article in my site as a separate web page. I also submit it to the following article submission sites:

http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.html http://www.ideamarketers.com http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml http://certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm

Many webmasters and ezine publishers frequent these article directories in search of articles. Submitting my articles to these directories gives them the opportunity of re-publishing my articles. While I have had some success with each of the above directories, by far the best among them is the ezinearticles.com directory.

Now, at the end of each article, I mention that people are free to re-publish the article as long as they include my resource box (i.e. my bio) at the end of the article. I always include the URL of my site in the resource box. This means that whenever someone publishes one of my articles in his/her web site, I have another site linking to my site. Also, many ezine publishers archive their ezines in their web sites. If they have re-published my article in a particular issue, I again get a link.

Writing articles is also an excellent viral marketing tool. As some webmasters and ezine publishers publish my articles, other webmasters and ezine publishers will read my article. Some of them, in turn, will publish my article, which will again be read by other webmasters and ezine publishers, some of whom will publish it… and so on.

Also, since only web sites related to mine would be interested in publishing my articles, all these links tend to come from related sites, which, as I mentioned earlier, are more valuable than links from unrelated sites.

Writing articles, of course, has another very important benefit - if you write good articles, it makes you known as an expert in your field. This helps to improve your credibility, which makes people more comfortable about buying your products or services.

Some notes about writing articles:

i) I have learnt through experience that some webmasters will publish other people’s articles and will display the complete resource box but will not link to the URL mentioned in the resource box. In order to prevent this, you need to explicitly state that the article can be published only if the URL mentioned in the resource box is linked to your site.

ii) Your resource box should not be too long - it should be no more than 6 lines long, formatted at 65 characters per line. Otherwise, other webmasters and ezine publishers will hesitate to publish your article.

7) Submitting to the directories

This is by far the most important step as far as improving the link popularity of your site is concerned. As I mentioned before, what is important is not only the number of links to your site, but also the quality of the links to your site. No links are as important as links from some of the major directories like Yahoo!, the Open Directory etc. However, Yahoo! currently requires a payment of $299 per year in order to list any commercial site. Paying them $299 per year just to improve your link popularity is probably not cost effective. But, the Open Directory is free, and you should definitely get your site listed in the Open Directory.

Also, you should submit your site to as many of the smaller directories as possible. You can get a list of such directories at http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_W eb/Searching_the_Web/Search_Engines_and_Directories/.

Exchanging links with other webmasters

The single-most effective way of improving the link popularity of your site is to exchange links with other webmasters who have sites which are related to yours, but are not direct competitors. This is called reciprocal linking.

However, the problem with this method is the sheer amount of time it takes if you were to do it manually.

If you decide to do this manually, you can easily expect to spend hundreds of hours on this activity alone.

Here’s what you need to do:

i) You need to use the search engines to find sites related to yours that are not direct competitors by typing in some keywords that are related to your site.

ii) You also need to find sites that link to your competitors.

iii) You need to visit these sites and see if they actually exchange links.

iv) If you decide that you want to exchange links with a particular site, you need to find out exactly how it wants you to link to it from your site.

v) You then need to manually add a link to this site in your site.

vi) Then, you need to find out the email address of the owner of the website and send the owner a personalized email requesting that he/she adds a link to your site in return.

vii) In many cases, you will not be able to locate the email address of the owner simply because the owner has not published any email address on the site. In that case, all the effort that you had put into evaluating whether or not the site is suitable for exchanging links will have been a waste of time.

viii) If you do manage to locate the email address, you need to send a personalized and customized email to the website owner.

ix) You then need to wait and see whether this site is willing to exchange links with you.

x) If the site is not willing to link to you, you need to remove the link to the site from your site. Once again, all the effort that you had put into evaluating the site, linking to it and sending an email to the owner will have been a waste of time.

You have to repeat the same process all over again for the next site that you want to exchange links with.

Obviously, there has to be a better way. And there is!

Luckily for you, I have developed a ground-breaking new software called LinkExplore that completely automates the entire process of exchanging links with other website owners, thus saving you hundreds of hours of your time.

I had originally developed the software for my own needs but later decided to make it available to other website owners as well.

Go to the following URL to learn more about the software: http://www.LinkExplore.com/t.php?4901

Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected search engine positioning specialists on Athe Internet. hAVE Sumantra’s Company place your site at the top of the search engines. Visit: http://the-easy-way.com/main.html For more advice on how you can take your web site to the top of the search engines, subscribe to his FREE NEWSLETTER: http://the-easy-way.com/newsletter.html

Most webmasters are reluctant to link out from their home pages, so getting home page links pointing to your own website can be difficult. But there is a simple and effective way to get tons of home page links.

All you have to do is find websites that are relatively new and offer the webmasters a good link from two or three internal, well-established pages on your site in exchange for a home page link on theirs.

This is a true win-win situation because your linking partner gets two or three high quality inbound links to help establish his/her new site while you get a home page link on a site that will become established in its own right in a relatively short period of time.

Some of your linking partners will move your home page link to an internal page after their site becomes established, in which case you can drop all but one of your links to the other site. It’s still win-win because:

1 - You still have a quality inbound link in exchange for yours.

2 - During the time it takes for the other site to grow and build a solid rankings foundation in the search engines, you’re taking advantage of the anchor text boost and traffic from the home page link!

How to Exchange links with other Sites

As a result of search engine changes, linking with other sites is becoming an increasingly iportant way to generate traffic to your website. Links done properly will repay the effort and not be subject to the whims of the search engines. No more need to be concerned unduly about algorithmn changes and the “Google dance”.

Why have a Links Page ?

A links page should give your visitors a choice of quality information and resources, not just a web page to improve your search engine rankings. Quality information on a links page is the best long-term strategy to improve search engine ranking.

Search engines are becoming very sophisticated and realise that many sites are putting up links merely to improve their rankings. Always exchange links with web sites that are connected with your site’s theme.

How Do you Find Link Exchange Partners?

One way is to go to the search engines and look for sites that are compatible with your own. Send the webmaster an email requesting requesting a link or phone him or her personally.

An easier way is to register with the SiteSell free link exchange program which will give you quality links and save you a lot of time. To register free for the SiteSell link exchange program go to :

http://www.merchant-account-service.com/link_exchange.html

How can I tell the web site I want to exchange with has any traffic?

Check the traffic ranking with Alexa (www.alexa.com). This will give you a good idea of its popularity. Another way is to check its page rank with Google. If a web site has a page rank of 4, it is more popular than one with a page rank of 20. Try to exchange links with sites that have more traffic but you must be realistic also.

How do I show my links on my web Site?

You can put your links anywhere on your web site, provided you do not have a large page with links to all kinds of sites. Remember, keep your links relevant to the content of your site.

If you have only a few links, the best way is to have a list with the title of the web site and a short description of its content. Large numbers of links are not recommended as it looks a bit tacky.

Exchange links can be worth the time and effort if done properly. The golden rule is only exchange links with other web sites that have content related to yours.

(c) John Lynch

( For a Free 6-part mini course on Internet Marketing including free interviews with top marketers such as Jay Abraham, Joe Vitale etc., free autoresponder and free Internet Marketing ebooks by top gurus. http://www.merchant-account-service.com/internet_marketing_explai ned.html)

by Rick Hendershot, Marketing Bites

Quite often I get asked what the magic solution is for getting better Google ranking. Sometimes the questions sound fairly naive, something like this:

“I have recently established a site called wazooski.com and would like to rank much higher in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Can you tell me how to do this without spending a lot of money? Can I get into the top 10 within 1 or 2 months?”

This is one of those “rookie” questions. Experienced marketers know that predicting search engine rankings is always a hit or miss affair. SEO practitioners who “guarantee” high search engine rankings are making misleading claims, intended only to sell their services.

Imagine how many sites within any competitive area are going after those “top 10″ rankings. Many of your competitors have been around for a few years, so they have an established site with lots of valuable content, steady traffic, and thousands of sites linking into them. How can you expect just to throw up a site and within a month or two walk away with a “top 10″ position?

This is only possible within a narrowly defined, highly specialized niche. Say for instance you are going to hold a Wazooski family reunion next year, and want to use the internet to promote it. Chances are a few well placed announcements scattered around 20 or 30 article sites, directories and blogs will generate enough search engine activity to get you good positioning in the search engines. Within a month or two you should get the number one spot for “Wazooski family reunion”, within the top 10 for “Wazooski”, and possibly even an honourable mention further down the list for “family reunion”. Using a blog or two will often speed this process up considerably.

The reason is pretty obvious: there is not a lot of competition for “Wazooski family reunion”. In fact you may be the only one competing for that term. All you really need to do is get your site or your announcements spidered and the chances are pretty good that you will get a high ranking almost immediately.

But try this with a more competitive term and you are talking a completely different game. Considering that most competitive terms have thousands of sites chasing after that illusive “top 10″ ranking, you will be lucky to even get on the radar screen.

And trying to do it within a month or two is almost completely unrealistic.

In face of rapidly advancing technology, the gap between nations and cultures are slowly getting closer and narrower. The world is getting smaller for sure, but still, there are still people who have little understanding on how other cultures work. Some still hold on to their biases, while others refuse to learn how to adjust to and respect the differences between cultures and peoples. Most people have branded other people as this and many major cultures have their own sets of connotations given to them by others. The Indians speak funny English, the Americans are arrogant, the French are snobbish, the Chinese are copycats; but as people learn about each other, they realize that some of their generalizations were right, and others were way off the mark. An aspect of living that really differs from culture to culture is the way people eat. In a traditional Japanese home, it is a widely accepted practice that people slurp their noodles and soup. Europeans find this impolite. Most Asians love to eat a fish’ head. Americans find this disgusting. Moslems do not eat pork, but most people would love to have pork barbecue. Chinese do not discuss business matters on the table while Americans leave their meals when an important call comes up. The thing is, every culture behaves differently from another, and the dining table is just a starting point. A creative way of infusing some culture to students is taking food trips to restaurants that offer foreign delicacies. Not only are these places filled with bits of cultural knowledge, students can learn them while filling their stomachs. For instance, in a trip to a Japanese restaurant, teachers must prep their students how to behave, like leaving the shoes at the doorway, and eating their food using chopsticks. Students can also learn about the culture’s unique ingredients, spices, cooking style, recipes, dining manners and all that. Teachers can even ask the restaurant owner to guide their students throughout the meal while giving insights on Japanese culture, apart from eating. Cultural awareness in the dining table helps promote better understanding between different traditions, especially if two men from diverse cultural backgrounds are seated in the same table. Appreciation of international gastronomy, unique dining etiquette, and other eating practices can spell positive impact on both sides, even if that Indian curried chicken is way spicy for most people’s tastes.

Learn more about Courtney Sale Ross, the founder of the Ross Globabl Institute, on the Building Education site.

Courtney Sale Ross gave her views of education in an interviewe with Charlie Rose.

Courtney Sale Ross is featured in Forbes magazine.

Getting links to your website all over the Internet is one of your best methods to get a higher ranking in the search engines. The reason for this is the more links you have, the more popular you are in the eyes of the search engines, and as a result you will be rewarded with a higher relevancy ranking than other websites with fewer links. So, what you want to do is joint venture with as many other websites as possible and get your links out on the Net. This will increase your traffic and ultimately your revenue, so it is certainly worth your while to put some serious effort into reciprocal linking. Follow these suggestions on how you can get started with reciprocal link exchanges and win the link popularity contest.

Tip #1 Find Quality Sites

The first thing you should do when it comes to reciprocal linking is research. You want to find some really high quality sites that already rank well and that target the same market as your website. These sites should not be in direct competition with your site, they should be related in some way. The reason it is important to find sites that already have a lot of traffic is because the more traffic they have, the more people that will view your link and ultimately visit your site because of it. Of course, you can still get your site linked with less popular sites, but that should only be after you already are linked with some really popular sites.

Tip #2 Use the Personal Touch

When asking another website to link to your site, you need to make sure your site is worth linking to. For instance, if you still have pages under construction or is disorganized with no clear focus, no other site is going to want to link to you. So, first make sure you have a quality site. Then, write to the quality sites you located personally. You want to send a polite e-mail that compliments the other site and ask for a link. You should provide all of the information for your link including title, URL, description, and any information the webmaster will need to link to you. This will save the webmaster a lot of time and effort and he will be more likely to link to your site than if you do not provide this information.

Tip #3 Link First

In your personalized e-mail you should also mention that you have added a link to their site and give them instructions on where they can find it. When you link first followed by a link request, providing all the necessary information to post your link, you will significantly increase your chances of getting a reciprocal link. Also, give the other webmaster some time to get your link up. Check back in a week or two and if it still not up, simply send a gentle reminder e-mail. If your site is still not posted within a short period of time after that then simply remove the websites link from your website and keep moving. Remember, while obtaining links is your goal it might not be first on everyone’s list.

One of the best ways to optimize your business Web site for higher search engine placement is to increase the amount of other sites that link to you. Most search engines use the quantity and quality of links pointing to your site to determine how to rank your site. The more quality links pointing to your pages, the better your placement will be. And that means more traffic for your business.

Here is a way for other sites to link back to you.

Link Directories Link directories are the best way to get your website noticed and other people to link back to you. Website owners pay to have their link posted on other websites for the purpose of linking back to your website. Find websites that sell complementary products or provide content that is related to the product or service that you are offering.

Listing your business in Web directories can help connect buyers and sellers, and it has the same basic advantages as advertising in the traditional yellow pages. Some of those advantages include: attracting targeted customers, establish your brand, and providing your current customers with up to date information about your business. But online directories give you an even greater opportunity to sell products and services because they:

1. Allows you to attract targeted customers outside of your local area. Go nationwide, while staying local.

2. Let anyone with an Internet connection find your business quickly and easily, usually from the comfort of their own home.

3. Provide current and potential customers with maps, driving directions and an active link to your company’s Web site.

4. Give your company international exposure.

If you’re just starting out and your site doesn’t get a lot of traffic, you may not get a one-to-one trade; be prepared to make concessions, at least until you have a track record and traffic to point to. That said, there are still a few companies that won’t turn down an opportunity for more exposure, so you’ll probably find a few that are still willing to do a free link exchange with you. However, the number of website owners offering free link exchanges are dwindling.