Step 1 - Organize Your Links This is important for two reasons: It makes it easier for your departing visitors to find sites they are interested in. It will save you a mountain of time as your links directory grows. The first thing we will tell you is forget having a links page, you need to build a links directory. It is VERY important that you do not get your site blacklisted as being a links farm. Your links directory should be organized into clear categories and have no more than 30 links per page. If you have a category with more than 30 links then you need to split it into further pages. The best way to do this is to use categories and sub categories. For example, if you have a jewelry site you are probably going to link to a lot of other jewelry sites. So have the link on the home page of your directory say "Jewelry". Now, instead of putting all jewelry related links onto one page, split it into sub categories so the user clicks "Jewelry" then sees the sub cats for Gold Jewelry, Silver Jewelry, Hand Made Jewelry, Necklaces, Rings and so on. This will help reduce the number of links on any one page. If a sub category reaches the point where it has more than 30 links simply split it into page 2 and so on. Won't this be hard work to maintain? If you build the pages manually, yes it will. It is easy enough to do if you only have a few links, but the idea here is to exchange links with lots of other sites. To build a links directory of any decent size will require you to have some kind of automated program. We STRONGLY recommend you invest a small amount in a decent reciprocal links management program to help you with building and maintaining your links directory. You will see the program we recommend all over this area of the site but read on first. We would like to clear up one point here, in Googles webmaster guidelines they say... "Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links." They are also not keen on automated link exchange programs. DO NOT confuse a reciprocal links management program with the kind of automation that search engines are against. They are talking about the programs that offer services like "Add your links to hundreds of other sites with the click of a button". These services WILL NOT help you, they just create lots of identical links pages on the web, which of course the search engines will spot. Not only this, but you don't know who you are linking with by using those programs. You could end up with 1,000 links that no person ever sees. Our method involves knowing who you are linking with and making sure they are showing your links clearly. You will not be penalized by a search engine for using a reciprocal links management program to build your directory. Why Do I Need A Links Program? For many reasons, here are a few: To make it easy for link partners to add their link to your site To be able to check that your link is still on the other site and they are not cheating you. Sure, you can manually check to see if your link is still on another site if you only have 15 links, but what about when you have over 500 links? It just isn't practicle to manually check a large number of links on a regular basis as it is too time consuming. To save time. If you manually build your directory, every time someone offers a link exchange you have to find the right page and add the new link, not to mention you have to build all the pages, categories and sub categories in the first place, that is a LOT of work. A good reciprocal links management program will automatically build and maintain your directory for you. What Features Should I Look For In A Links Management Program? In our time we have used several links management programs. A decent reciprocal links management program will offer at least the following features: It will come with a pre installed, comprehensive set of categories and sub categories which you can add to or edit. It will build html pages. This is important, many links programs out there build php pages with very strange urls. Example, if the category containing your partners link is "Cars" many links programs will build the page for cars but the url to it will be something like: http://www.site.com/links/index.php?link&cat=43" While some search engines can read php, not ALL of them do. Many search engines still stop reading the url when they get to the ? as dynamically created sites can hold up their spiders. A good links program will build a page like: http://www.site.com/links/cars.html Much better for search engines and getting both your site and your partners site recognized. It will use a true URL to link to your partners site, not jump codes. Some programs, when you mouse over a link, will link to http://www.site.com/links/links.php?jump=43 This does your link partner no good at all. The link to their site should point directly to their site. It will automatically check all of your links and confirm that your link is still in place on your link partners site. If it is not, then the program should let you know. It should automatically disable the links of sites that try to cheat you by removing your link, or sites that may have shut down. There is nothing more frustrating for your users than clicking dead links. It should make it easy for a link partner to add their link to your site and then check that they have already posted a link to your site. These are the really just the basic requirements your links management program needs. Can You Recommend A Good Links Management Program? Yes we can, as we said earlier we have tried many. The program we recommend is Reciprocal Links Pro. This program is packed with features, yet very easy to use. We won't list the many features here, you can visit their site to see what it does. However, we will say this, it is the ONLY script we would recommend. It is reliable, it does not use lots of server resources which will upset your web host, it has the most accurate link check we have seen and it is very easy to use. Reciprocal Links Pro costs only $79, one time, with free lifetime updates. If you have more than one site they offer additional licenses for $15 per site. This is a very small amount of money for such a good program, especially when you consider the amount of time it will save you. $79 would buy you 100 visitors from Google AdWords if you were lucky. A good links management program will continue to bring visitors to your site free for many years to come. The support from RLP is also first class, click here to check out the program (link opens in new window). Step 2 is "Offer A Variety Of Links Categories" Click Here