In the site optimation forum, cf05 asked for tips to attract some traffic to his site. In a later reply, he inquired how to set up reciprocal links. To remain on-topic, I post my answer here in the reciprocal link forum. I am a newcomer in the SEO-world, and my experience might be useful for him and everyone who is setting up a website for the first time.

First, let me reply on the reciprocal link page on my site. The link page must not be easy to find for the visitors, it is only there to fool Google and the other search engines. Important is that the web crawlers can find it. In the righthand side column on my home page, almost near the bottom of the page, you will find a table with "suggested links". These are links to sites that have additional information about Cambodia. At the bottom of that table, yo see:

More links

• Cambodia links
• Travel/Hotel links
• Internet links
• Other links

This is where my reciprocal links are published.

Now, when you start going for reciprocal links, you should have an idea of the Google PR (=Page Rank), if only to make sure that the site is not blacklisted, because linking to blacklisted sites can get you blacklisted. To find out the PR, you can install the Google toolbar and enable the Page Rank option. This will enable you to see the PR of every page you load in your browser. If the home page has a PR0, check out if it is listed at all. If not, don't link.

Another word of advice: If you make your link pages, make more than you need in the beginning. Make 4 or 5 (or more), put a few links on each and put a link to your links pages from your home page. This way, when Google gives you a PR>0, you are likely to get a (lower) PR on each of the links pages. Look at my site: the home page has a PR4 and all pages that had a link from my home page have PR2. The first link page has PR2 too. The other link pages still have PR0 because they were added later. So don't make the same mistake. Having a PR makes it easier to get reciprocal links.

Next step is to request reciprocal links from webmasters. I visited the site you mentioned and entered "debt management" in the keyword form. This listed a number of sites related to that keyword. You should now visit those sites, search for their link page and see if they have options for linking. Sometimes you can request reciprocal links by filling out a form, sometimes you must send an email to the webmaster. Sometimes there is no advice for reciprocal links at all. In that case, disregard the site and don't waste your time on it.

Another site to try out is linkpartners - this is the one where I found most of my links. You will have to register, this will enter you into their list and allow other sites to request links from you.

All sites will ask you to publish a link to them first, some may place your link automatically if they find this link on the page you indicate, others will have to approve first.

Give it a try and let me know the problems you encounter. I have been through it all myself. Success!

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marc
Cambodia - Phnom Penh - Phnom Penh events today

Can I just correct the URL to the link partner tool. We are getting a lot of 404s ;-)

http://www.arclid.com/linkpartners.php

Regards.

I dont understand why you dont want visitors to see your links page. Isnt having a good resource page a benefit to your visitors. To offer them a reason to revisit your site since you have links that may be off interest to them. I thought that was one of the concepts to link building.

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www.endbalding.com