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Lots of people loudly proclaim the importance of inbound links. In fact depending on your niche up to 80% of your rank in Google may depend on your ability to conduct an ongoing link blitz. Not to mention all the traffic well placed links can deliver up.

If this is so then why aren't more pursuing links?

Good question.

Like most worthwhile things in life there's a dirty little secret no one talks about when it comes to links. That is few detail the effort involved to manage an ongoing link blitz.

And I should know. I just did such a blitz and got 29 confirmed links out of 75 attempts.

Granted any initial burst of links added to virginal links pages is a snap to manage. Find potential candidates using the method of your choice, add their info to your links pages, solicit the link either by email or filling out a form on the potential partner's site, sit back and wait to be showered with links. What's the big deal?

Well, each new linking attempt adds to the management overhead.

Fail to manage your link blitz properly and sooner or later you'll find you're failing to get any links at all.

Fail to get links and all too soon you'll find your search engine rankings are headed south into oblivion rather than upwards towards #1.

The management process I use is simple. Still it takes effort or that dreaded four letter word - WORK. But it's a necessary evil if you want to stay on top of your linking campaign.

So here are 8 helpful tips.

=== > Tip 1: Fill Her Up - Wisely

While you need to keep the pipeline of linking candidates full it's a good idea to avoid

' Zeus links pages since many times they are chronically PR deficient often sporting PR 0. Suggesting banishment by Google?

' Framed sites since you can't really tell the PR of the framed links page.

' Links pages with more than 100 links. But for sure links pages bigger than 101K in size since Google won't crawl pages bigger than that.

=== > Tip 2: Keep on Keeping on

For success in the long run it's best to establish a regular solicitation routine you can maintain.

Unless I'm on an all out blitz, I shoot to get out 5 link requests a day four days a week per site. With a 30%+ response rate that gives me six or seven new links a week.

HINT: Getting five requests out takes 15 minutes or less assuming you've done the prep work of finding potential link partners, their contact and linking info and have gotten up the reciprocal links on your links pages.

Once you know your typical hit ratio this is something you can ultimately delegate to a virtual assistant.

=== > Tip 3: Like Santa Make a List

It's vital you maintain a master list of those approached. If you don't after awhile you won't know who you have solicited to trade links and who you haven't. Which becomes a bigger problem the more link trading you attempt to do.

HINT: I simply use a MS Word table. I drop the http://www from each URL. That way I can sort in alpha order and quickly see if I've contacted a given site or not.

HINT: Depending on how many links I'm pursuing I create a file of linking activity either for the day or for the week per web site.

=== > Tip 4: The Devils in the Details

Inside that file I like to list the specific page my link should appear on. Along with the partner's contact info. Plus the linking info I put up on my site. This makes it easier to verify a given link is up.

=== > Tip 5: Date Stamp It

I include an HTML comment with each link that tells me when I put it up. That way you know how long you've been link partners.

=== > Tip 6: Are You a Linkmate?

Keep track of who lets you know they've linked up.

In some niches next to none will do so. In others most will let you know they have. Just depends. But you want to know so you don't go hunting theirs down in your final sweep before removing those who didn't trade.

=== > Tip 7: Times Up

Wait a reasonable amount of time. Then remove those that didn't reciprocate from your links pages. Pain in the neck? Yes. But vital if you want to keep your links pages clean and avoid rewarding those who couldn't be bothered to link to you.

HINT: I've found if someone is going to link up they'll usually do it sooner rather than later. Especially if you have an attractive linking opportunity (higher PR'fewer links per page'quality content) For me 10 days is reasonable.

=== > Tip 8: Stash for Later

Don't pitch that list of those who failed to link up. Just because they didn't do so today doesn't mean they won't in the future. As your site grows and the PR improves you'll want to re-approach them in 3-6 months. Having a list of past candidates handy makes doing so easy.

Apply these 8 tips and you too may end up in the link traders Hall of Fame. Or failing that at least you'll have some to-die-for traffic not to mention lofty Google rankings.

Copyright 2004 John Gergye