Useful Tools for Maximizing Your Link Exchanges

Generating valuable back links to your site can be a time consuming task, especially if you are trading links with other webmasters.  Searching for good trade partners, corresponding back and forth to work out the details of a trade, and then adding the proper code to your site all takes time and effort.  That’s why it’s all the more important to make sure that the energy you put into swaps is worthwhile; that you are making good trades that will benefit your site in the coming months and years.

One of the first things you can do to make trading easier is to look for trades on webmaster message boards and forums.  These online communities typically give site owners like yourself the opportunity to connect with others who operate similar or related web sites for the purpose of link building.  If you’re fortunate enough to find a good and active forum, you should be successful at finding many partners there -- and because of the way you found them, you can expect them to be as committed as you are to doing good business.

Another way to make good trades is to research your competitors.  Find out where they are getting their backlinks, and request links from those same sites.  Odds are, if they have chosen to link to your competitors, they will be happy to link to you as well.  Furthermore, you may find places where you can get one-way links; opportunities to comment on blog entries, on social networking sites, and others are easy to find using a competitor’s back link check -- and it’s free and simple to check for backlinks on search engines like Yahoo.com. 

A third tool that you can use to make good trades is an add-on for browsers like Firefox that will allow you to see whether or not links are tagged “no follow.”  No follow links are useless when it comes to SEO-related link building -- they are only good for any traffic that they send because the no follow tag tells search engines not to count the links when determining your site’s reputation.  Using a service that highlights all no follow links can help you before you make a trade -- don’t even waste time asking for a link if you expect it to be tagged.  They can also help after the fact; there’s no point in reciprocating a link that won’t do you any good. 

Additionally, a quick search can connect you to various free resources that will help you track, analyze, and improve your progress as a webmaster.  Similarly, there are also many free tools for exchanging links, and if you take the time to research the good and popular ones, you’ll likely find that they save you a lot of time and energy in link building.  And as always, following the standard guidelines for being a good trade partner will go a long way in helping your site to increase and improve its presence online.