SEO: How to get link partners & boost your rank
January 31, 2007 • Glenn Murray
Probably the most well known method of generating inbound links is to look for link partners. This is done in a variety of ways:
- ask customers to link to your site (possibly in return for a link to theirs)
- ask suppliers to link to your site (possibly in return for a link to theirs)
- look for relevant high ranking sites and ask them to link to you (possibly in return for a link to theirs)
- buy SEO software which locates high ranking sites and automatically emails their owners asking them to link to you (possibly in return for a link to theirs)
In my opinion, though, link partners is one of the least effective method of increasing your search engine ranking because:
- It’s normally done via email and, unfortunately, webmasters of high ranking sites receive many link partner requests each day (not to mention hundreds of other SPAM emails). They’re normally automated and irrelevant. As a result, most email-initiated link partner requests are deleted.
- Most link partner requests are sent by webmasters of low PR sites to webmasters of high PR sites. Although the link would be very beneficial to the low PR site, it wouldn’t help the high PR site at all.
- Even if you offer a reciprocal link (a link back to their website), most webmasters of high PR sites will not be interested because it’s extra work. What’s more, they won’t want to obscure the purpose of their site with hundreds of links (relevant or not, they don’t want to look like a directory to their customers).
- Reciprocal links are of questionable value, unless the sites are closely related.
TIP: If you decide to manually look for link partners, one way of assessing a site’s importance is to look at their Google PageRank (PR). PR is how Google scores importance. It gives all sites a mark out of 10. Any site with a PR of 4 or above is generally considered a worthy link partner. By downloading the Google Toolbar, you can view the PR of any site you visit.