Increase your site’s traffic with reciprocal links

So you have a new website. Congratulations!

Now what?

While keeping your content fresh is central to bringing visitors back to your site, what do you do if you’re having trouble getting visitors to your site?

Promote. Promote. Promote.

Generating traffic is all about increasing your site’s visibility. One free and simple way to promote your site is to link it to other sites. Start by identifying your existing relationships with relevant people and organizations as well as new relationships you’d like to explore. Then research these groups’ websites to identify the best place to put your link (often websites and blogs will have a designated place for partner links). Next, determine where on your site you can highlight your partners’ links and what other information of theirs you’re willing to provide (i.e., partner logo, a brief description about the partner, etc).

Now it’s time to contact your partners. Let them know that you would like to promote their organization and/or cause on your site in exchange for a link on their site. More than likely, your partner will be interested in cross promoting your web sites. If for some reason they can’t put your link on their site, get creative—ask permission to put your events on their calendar or ask if your organization can be a guest author or the feature for an online story on their site.

It takes a little time and a bit of research, but the results are well worth it: more visitors to your site mean greater awareness of your cause.

Tips for reciprocal links:
1. Put links on your site where they make the most sense—on a resource/partner page, or in an article about a specific topic for which your partners can provide more information.

2. Identify as many partners as possible. The more links you have to your site, the higher your site will display in search engine results.

3. Name your links with relevant keywords. Rather than use “click here,” use the name of your organization or the topic or item you’re linking to. (I.e., WOSU Public Media or WOSU reports on the latest news.) The description not only informs the visitor about the content of your site, it will help search engines find your site and rank it higher in search results.

4. Use Google Analytics to understand visitor behavior. This free and extensive tool can also identify where visitors come from and what page they entered on. Re-evaluate the partnership every six months to a year to ensure relevancy and effectiveness.