Building Quality Leads
Through Linking Strategy
Tony Subia May 2004
Subia Interactive.com

Many website marketers ignore the importance of incoming and outgoing links. They won’t invest the time to implement a linking strategy or will not dedicate the effort to continuously create rich informative content, which attracts unsolicited links naturally. They often refuse the opportunities that quality reciprocal linking offers out of fear of diverting users to other sites, particularly to competing websites.

That attitude is a crucial mistake that can doom a site’s success. Georgia Tech’s GVU Center’s 8th WWW User Survey finds that users find new web pages through other web pages (88%) and via search engines (82%). Those factors demonstrate the critical importance of accumulating an abundance of inbound links from other sites to your website. If you expect a continuous flow of qualified traffic, you best make sure your site is well-connected to other complementing web pages and to the major search engines.

Link popularity is a component of search engine ranking criteria. If that by itself is not enough to motivate a linking strategy, then consider these reasons:

• Links to informative content connects users to valuable resources that your visitors will appreciate and will incite them to return more often.

• When you link to resourceful content, your site becomes a respected authority that infers expertise, which is also a factor that effects search engine ranking.

• Linking out is what strengthens the web. It’s traditional and founding purpose is exchanging knowledge, resources and information that ultimately isolates what a users desires.

A successful website links to informative content and does the things necessary to attract incoming links from quality websites which refers the type of leads that are most likely to result in higher conversion rates.

If you execute an effective linking strategy, you shouldn’t fear opening doors for visitors to leave your site. Just don’t open the doors too wide. If you don’t offer visitors the value they’re looking for, they will leave anyway. That’s why they are called visitors. Rich information, fresh content and offering cost-efficient solutions will not only keep visitor attention longer but will keep them coming back.

That being said, an important advantage is accumulating more incoming links than you send out to other sites.

Linking To Your Competition
Don’t fear linking to competition, but choose the right competitors. There can be definite advantages to reciprocal linking with your competition. Ever notice that in the brick-and-mortar world that fast-food competitors are typically located in close proximity? There’s a marketing purpose to that strategy. For mutual benefit they collectively provide user convenience by satisfying differing tastes, whims, budgets and desires at particular given times. The geographical “alliance” keeps business within a “closed circle” of competitors.

Competing websites can apply similar advantage through reciprocal referral. This is particularly true when the alliance offers slightly different and complementing products and services. Alliances among “smaller players” can help offset the market strength of the bigger, more well-known competitors. Imagine the derived common benefits of feeding link popularity that impresses search engine ranking criteria and lead referral among the strategic participants.

Referring a visitor to a competitor that you know has higher prices for like-items with little added value can be a significant advantage. Since users generally apply comparative shopping, why not send them where comparatives will give you the competitive advantage. Those visitors will likely return to you to make the purchase.

Besides the linking advantages, it makes good business sense to create good relationships with friendly competition, sharing ideas, exploring opportunities and keeping a mutual eye on the bigger-guns is always an advantage.

Seek Complementing Reciprocal Links
Use the same approach to finding reciprocal link partners as you would looking for customers. Which site’s visitors would be the most likely to be interested in your products and services? If you sell socks, ally with a site that sells shoes. Furniture would complement carpet. Computer hardware could benefit networking solutions. Buyers of real estate need mortgage loans.

Well, you get the idea. Establish linking relationships with websites that have the potential of becoming volume traffic generators.