Regular Old Links

Why would another site owner code a link to your site into their pages? It means more traffic for you and less for them, as site visitors click over to your site, right? Wrong - if things were this simple, there wouldn't be any Web. Links to related sites are valuable resources for site visitors. A lot of the sites I have bookmarked, and visit again and again, are sites that have lots of good links to other sites. And just about the most popular sites of all are search engines, which consist of - you guessed it! Links to other sites. External links are definitely not a one-sided bargain, so don't be bashful about asking for them. Of course, some site owners will expect a reciprocal link, which benefits both parties.

There are several different types of sites that might favor you with a link. Top candidates are other companies that you do business with, such as suppliers, customers, etc. In the true spirit of "coopetition," some companies' Web sites even feature links to their competitors. Any site with material related to yours may be worth asking for a link. For example, if you own a blues nightclub, you might solicit links from blues magazines, radio stations, booking agents, blues musicians, harmonica manufacturers, etc. etc. etc. (actually, the idea of a nightclub owner going around asking for Web site links gave me a good laugh, but it's just an example).

Some pages, or whole sites, are simply lists of links, usually known as a "links page." Actually, a "directory" is nothing more than a larger and better-organized "links page." There are quadrillions of links pages out there - some are very useful, but most are pathetic pieces of crap. You could easily spend the rest of your life seeking out all the links pages that relate to your topic, so learn to be selective.

A good links page (or directory) aims to cover one topic well. They may try to be comprehensive, and include every site they know of in a certain category, or they may be selective, and list only what they consider the best sites. An example of an excellent specialty directory is The Blue Highway. If you're into blues, you will find what you need here. The thousands of links are organized into logical categories, and the site owners keep it up to date.

A crummy links page is just a long list of unrelated links, often in no particular order. It's no use to man or beast. Some of these are what you might call a "bumping" page. That is, the most recent link that was submitted always appears at the top, and the existing links move down the page as new ones are added. These are totally useless, the milieu of MLM scams and porno sites.

Many sites include a links page, often called "Web Resources" or some such. A good example is the one at CIO magazine, which has a fat list of IT-related sites, including a good list of online computer magazines. A links page like this can be a valuable resource which draws traffic to the site. In fact, if you can spare the time, setting up something like this of your own can be a good long-term traffic builder.

More often, a links page that's part of a larger site is just a place for the site owners to plug other sites belonging to them or their buddies, or a place to stash unwanted links that they were required to post as the price of getting a reciprocal link for themselves. If you actively solicit links from other sites, many of them will ask (or require) you to respond in kind. You'll probably want to establish a links page to put these links on, as you certainly don't want to clutter up your home page. Whether you try to build this links page into a useful resource, or just make it a dusty old back room, is up to you. Some sites don't even have a link to their links page anywhere on the site. Not very much in the old-Web spirit of cooperation, but a lot of sites do it.

How do you tell how much traffic a site gets, and thus whether it's worth your time trying to get a link from them? Unfortunately, the quality of the site design will tell you little, as there are many amateurish sites that get lots of traffic, and even high-traffic sites run by major corporations often feature glaring errors. If you can figure out how recently the site has been updated, that's always a good indicator. The type of ads on a site can also tell you what league it plays in. Are the ads for well-known products, or for MLM and porno? Or maybe there are no ads at all! You can also check the HTML code that runs the ads. If you see the names of big ad industry players like DoubleClick, SoftBank or Real Media, that indicates that it's a pretty high-traffic site. Of course, by the time you've actually found a site, and found the owner's email address, it's probably easier just to send them a link request and not worry about it. Alas, this is one of the reasons there's so much spam and semi-spam out there - instead of doing a little research to see if it's appropriate to contact a particular site owner, it's quicker just to hit Send and move on. Sigh.

When requesting links from other sites, be polite, and not pushy. I use a standard email message that looks like this:

Dear ____,

Would you like to add My Site to your list of Web resources at http://yoursite.com/links.html ?

My Site is a great resource, because blah blah blah.

By the way, I like your site!

Thanks,
Charlie Morris
Cmorris@WebDevelopersJournal.com

If you know the site owner's name, use it. And tell them what page you are asking them to place a link on. This tells them that you actually visited their page, and aren't just spamming out link requests willy-nilly. And of course, a compliment on their site never hurts, and the old reliable business tools "please" and "thank you" go a long way. I always just ask for a link, and leave it up to them to get back to me and ask for a reciprocal link.

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