Request for advice on building links

[Jessica]

I have read much of the useful information that posters have provided on this forum about building links and the importance of doing so, but I still have a few questions which I hope someone will be able to help with.

1. What EXACTLY is anchor text? Is the text that surrounds the link code or is it words actually included in the link itself?

2. I want to provide links that my site visitors are likely to be interested in. Is there an accepted protocol for declining requests for reciprocal links with sites I don't want to include? Or am I being too arrogant - perhaps I should accept all requests and just be grateful?

3. My homepage, and my links page, both have a PR of 3. Would I be wasting my time asking for reciprocal links? Is there any benefit for other webmasters linking to a site which only has a PR3?

4. We've started to build our links page. I'd be grateful for any constructive criticism any one may have about the way we're going about it.

Our links page can be found at:
http://www.thevirtualbookshelf.com/?...690dd75b87b671

With thanks

Jessica

[jestep]

The correct use of anchor text would be:
Your Keywords

Use the actual search term that you want to be found for and that you are optimizing the page for.

Try to link with sites that like you said your visitors would be interested in, or relate to your site, but are non-competitive. You have every right to turn down a link request, and very often people use programs to send massive amounts of link requests to people to quickly build their incomming links. The best way is to review each site, and ensure that :
1. The site is good quality, well maintained, and provides usefull content.
2. The site isn't banned by google or any other search engine. I would either make sure the site has a google Page Rank of at least 4, or you know the person that you are linking to.

There is absolutely benifit from a PR3 page. Although it is not as high as a higher PR site, if it is a related website, the owner should take into consideration that you are building links, and thus your PR is going to be going up.

I think you have a very good start on your links page. The sites seem to be relavent and of good taste. There is nothing that would even suggest that you are trying to link to anything but a usefull site. One thing that may be an issue in the future is that the descriptions are long, which is fine, but when you get a lot of links there will be a lot of scrolling required to get down the page. When you have a lot of links on the page, where it is getting pretty long, I would make a second links page, and link it from the homepage just like the current links page. This way it too will have a good PR from the start.

I hope this helps some,

[Jessica]

jestep,

Thank you so much for your helpful and clear advice (that bit about anchor text had really been bothering me).

I see what you mean about the length of the page. As it get a little longer, we'll break it down into separate pages - particularly as we plan to start adding links to book collecting sites as well.

With thanks

Jessica

[Jessica]

Still interests in any further comments you may have

Jessica

[mizambar]

I think your links page is just fine. If I had a similar website, I would be more then happy to exchange with you.

As you develop your links, you definitely want group each category of links onto seperate pages. That way you avoid having a long list of links that don't seem to relate to one another...

As far as turning people down. Basically, it is your site. If you make the decision to only include links that *help* your visitors, then don't feel bad about turning down links to the ever present Viagra and Gambling websites.

Jestep had a lot of valid points about exchanging links. If you want your site show up in search engines, then it is important to include specific keywords in the anchor tag. Recently, I experimented with putting the "Birthday Gift" anchor tag in a few link exchanges. After a month, I noticed that my site is in the top 5 results for this keyword.

So, done right anchor tags with your link exchange partners can have a dramatic effect on your search engine results...

Hope this helps!

Scott

[Jessica]

Scott,

That's extremely helpful, thank you. I think we are going to have to look at how we are linking just as much as who we are linking to. This whole thing about anchor text is new to me. I want our links to be as useful to those we are linking to as they are to us and our visitors.

Thanks

Jessica