Getting Ready for Linking to Other Websites - link to your site

India, Republic of (Press Release) July 25, 2008 -- When you ask for a link to your site placed on another site, the other site owner most likely will want to see that you have a link to their site put on your site as well. This is called "reciprocal linking". It is for this reason that you should need a "Related Links" page on your site. In addition, you should also have “Link to Us” code on your site where other site owners can simply copy your HTML link code to their Links page. In this way, you control the use of keywords in the text of such links that point to your site. Google places importance on what the text of links that it finds on other sites. Google analyzes the text of a link and compares it to text found on the linked-to page. You want other websites to have your best keywords in the text of links that point to your site, and then you want to make sure those same keywords appear prominently on your linked-to page. One way to help ensure this to create a “Link to Us” code section on your Links page that contains link code that other website owners can copy and paste on their websites. This helps you control what the text of the link says that is placed on other sites. Since you must have external links that point to your site to increase your ranking with Google, other website owners will likely want you to reciprocate by having you place a link on your site that point to their site. For this reason, you need a “Related Links” page. In general, you should only link to other sites that offer similar or complementary products and services to your own. Don’t clutter your Related Links page with links to your aunt’s personal page for example (unless your aunt is in a similar line of work!). Remember that Google is analyzing what the theme of your site is, so you need to use keywords on your Related Links page that are related to your site’s keywords. This includes using keywords in the text of links that point to other sites if possible. You should also include some actual content on your Related Links page. Simply don’t create a long list of links with no text. Add a short description of the site to accompany each link. Ideally, all outgoing links to other sites should be located on a single Related Links page on your site. This is because outgoing links can “leak” PageRank on a page that contains outgoing links. Make sure that each outgoing link is reciprocated with a link back to your site, otherwise think about it if you really need that link (as a customer service). It is common to have outgoing links that are for the benefit of your customers and that you don’t expect reciprocal links back to your site for. A good example are links that go to lots of specific book pages on Amazon.com. Clearly such links can benefit your visitors, but clearly also Amazon.com is not going to reciprocate by placing links on their site back to your site! There is a way you can prevent “leakage” of PageRank from non-reciprocating links on your site, but use with caution. This method is discussed for the sake of completeness and because you may find it mentioned elsewhere. Bear in mind that this method is considered a little controversial, more advanced, and may not work in the future! You are forewarned. Don’t go overboard fretting over this. This is only an issue if you have LOTS of outbound, non-reciprocating links. Remember that you are leaking PR only from that page or pages that contain the outbound links. So the damage is generally quite minimal. Most links use a standard format, which Google has no problem following. However, if you use JavaScript code to create your links, Google may not be able to recognize this is a link, and hence PageRank won’t be leaked away for those links. Bear in mind that Google can recognize some JavaScript-coded links, depending on how the link is coded. Another point to consider is if a human editor at Google would consider you using such a tactic globally as a form of deception - not a good thing. Lastly, and most importantly, do not consider such a tactic for reciprocal links, as it really is deceitful for the other site owners as they do not get the value of your link counted by Google for their site.