Link Exchanges are a very time consuming project. The time it takes to find the sites to exchange with, contact them and place a link on your page can seem like an eternity. The hardest part about link exchanges isn’t the research, it's the waiting. This article will give you some tips to help speed response time to your requests.

"How long does it normally take?" you ask. The average wait can be 2 to 3 weeks, sometimes even longer. The reason for this is that many people operate their web site as a hobby or side business and may not be on top of their email. Keep these timeframes in mind before you judge the successfulness of a link campaign.

The first step is to find sites related to your web site that DO NOT have a large directory of links posted. You want to link to sites that have less than 100 links on their link page. Their Page Rank (PR) should be at least equal to yours. Higher is better, so always aim for the heavy hitters. Now, on to the business of saving you time.

Once you have located a site to contact, send a short but poignant email. If your email is too long, it may not be read. What should be in your email? First of all, your email should be personalized. Don't send the same email to dozens of people, send one at a time. This will help avoid being thought of as a spammer. The personalized touch shows you are serious and that the email was sent by a real person. Nothing says "this is of little importance to me" like a form letter, so avoid using them.

The letter should also include:

• The HTML code to your text ad. This will make it easier for people to add your link to their site.
• A link to your link page. This will make easier for whom ever you are requesting a link from to find your page.

Also, if they ask for you to link first, do so. If you have already been to their site (and certainly you should have if you are requesting a link), you will more than likely

know if they want a good faith link up. The email you send them should have a confirmation that their link is up and that you are requesting a reciprocal link.

Once you make contact with the web site owner, how long will you wait? A week? Two weeks? Honestly, it may be a month before you see your link unless you show some persistence. It doesn't always depend on how often they do updates. I would contact them once a week after your initial inquiry after checking their site first. They may have placed a link up without notifying you.

So, in summary:

• Spend time finding sites that will be an asset to your enterprise to save time by not corresponding with those that won't.
• Succinct, personalized E-mails
• Include all coding and links necessary to make it easy on the site you want to exchange with
• Research their link policy ahead of time
• Be persistent

Link exchanges are very time consuming. It takes patients and great recorded keeping to keep track of who has and has not added you. I do this with an excel spread sheet. It makes keeping track a lot easier to do. Especially, if you are doing large link campaigns.

Good luck.

I'm stuck on this now! I use ARELIS as a link program and somehow I cannot connect the links I collect with BlueVoda! Any suggestions would be most welcome,

Bill214

I don't understand. BlueVoda does not collect links.

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*****,

Thanks for your letter. I don't want BlueVoda to collect links, I can do that with another program. What I want to do is to make a link between BlueVoda and my Link Directory.

My link directory is in HTML format but BlueVoda will not allow me to link to it unless it is first imported into BlueVoda, and if there is a method of doing this, I would like to know how since I have tried every configuration I can think of. Maybe I have missed something.

At the moment, I have a six page website and a link directory ready to publish. The only way I can see this happening is if I re-write and import each and every link separately, if BlueVoda will not allow me to link directly.

If, as you say, BlueVoda does not collect links, how do I use them?

Bill

Bill

Bill, Upload your directory to the server and then check the url to make sure it's visible on the web. You can type the url into your address bar (yoursite.com/directory_name.html) or go to your CP and click on the file there. If it is visible, then use that same url to create links to it from your other pages. (If you aren't able to create a link back to your home page within the directory, set the target for the links to _blank. This will open the directory in a new page while keeping the originating page open as well.) I hope this is the answer you needed.

Hi Racefan!

Many thanks! I haven't actually uploaded my website, but I will and try out your suggestion!! That was the sort of information I needed rather than a statement of fact. I sure appreciate it

Bill

No problem at all. It should work just fine for you, but post back here if not and someone will be able to help.

First of all the article is great VodaHost! and lastly the article is great VodaHost!

I use a different program - and can upload it as was suggested by racefan, but have opted instead to cut and paste my ads onto my own pages. I did this to continue to have complete control of my pages. If you upload the pages using the program, and for some reason you ever leave that program - you will lose those pages and any rank you have on them.

Just a suggestion of another way to do it.

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Hi
this is actually a question on what Brig Gen Racefan20 has suggested.
i am very new to this and please bear with me if my question is daft.
i have my website up and running thanks to bluevoda and you experts out there and am in the process of setting up a links page to ask for reciprocating links.
using arelis, i have created a links page as well but i want to use my own website template to upload the link page. how can i do that as my bluevoda pages on my hard drive are not recognised as an HTML web pages by arelis??
my second question is how can i convert and view my saved Bluevoda pages as HTML coded pages??? i ask this as i understand that it is a good idea to include the HTML code of my website page when sending email for linking to my website (as suggested in the summary in Vodbot's post in this thread)
many thanks in advance for any help and thank you for your time.

Blue Voda is written in CSS, and cannot be converted to HTML.
You can always "view source" but not "publish" as such...

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Well, BlueVoda is NOT written in CSS, it makes use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) .

If you need the html of the pages for use with Arelis, download the code from your site into a folder on your computer, then have Arelis create the link collection. or, run any sitemapper that will create an html page with the links, edit it as required (most sitemappers of this kind give the option of manual editing) and then save the sitemap as html. Use arelis with this page, as all of your links ar there.

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I don't use Arelis, but I do use the one Beth does and Another one and both of those, I simply view source, and copy and paste the source code into that program to generate the template or BLEND my links pages to look like my site. You most likely will have to edit the relative links to full links for images etc. Check and see if Arelis has a similar process. Im betting they probably do. Then I simply copy the first page or the menu page into a site page template to get it into my menu bar (other ways to do this too but this is easiest).

Karen Mac

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