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If
You're Not Linking
You're Losing Money
If
you have a web site and you're not actively linking to other
relevant sites, you're losing a great opportunity to improve
your link popularity, get targeted traffic and increase your
income.
Why
Link?
There
are only a few ways you can generate
traffic to your site. You can pay someone, but you have
no way of knowing whether your visitors are interested in your
product, service or message. Some organisations that promise
thousands of visits to your site deliver the goods, but the
problem is, the people who visit aren't targeted to match your
product, service or message. You can advertise on or offline
to generate leads, you can wait and watch and hope someone finds
your site among the many millions, or you can actively generate
traffic yourself.
If
you create links to other sites with high traffic, some
of the people who visit those sites will click on links and
visit your site.
Let's
face it, if no-one visits your site, the chances of selling
something or getting your message read, are minimal. So, creating
targeted visitors should be one of your key priorities.
By targeted visitors I mean people who have bought a similar
product or service to yours, or who are predisposed to do so.
Consider
this example. I sell an epublication titled, Winning
That Government Job which, as the title suggests, helps
job seekers to understand the government recruitment and selection
process so they can be competitive when applying.
If
I advertise in the employment pages of the Saturday morning
newspaper in Sydney (the most populous Australian city) it will
cost me $200 for one edition. I usually generate several hundred
sales, but as soon as I stop advertising, the sales drop off.
If
I link with another organisation having something to do with
job seekers, numbers of their visitors visit my site and buy
my publication. It costs much less than successive $200 adverts.
Imagine what happens when I link to a dozen similar sites?
I
think you can see the benefit of linking.
Making
Links
When
I began linking I would place a keyword in a search engine and
then look for sites that were suitable to exchange links. I'd
find several sites, email them and occasionally get a response.
I tried to find link partners for whom my products and services
were complementary - so they could add value for their clients
while doing me a good turn.
The
process worked, but I had to spend an inordinate amount of time
doing it, so I looked for a better way and couldn't believe
my luck when I found a software program designed specifically
for this type of activity.
RULE
1 for Internet Marketers:
Automate!,
Automate!, Automate! |
Guess
what? I bought a copy of Arelis 4 and have reduced my workload
considerably. Here's what this time-saving and remarkable program
does for me:
- Finds link partners
with a similar or complementary web site as mine
- Enables me to
preview the sites and determine their popularity ... how many
visitors they get, how many pages each visitor attends and
much more
- Provides an
email capacity so I can offer to link (or joint venture) with
any of the sites that Arelis has found right from the Arelis
screen
- Records details
of the stage of the process I'm at eg, requested link, received
agreement, still linked, and allows me to check to see if
the link is still active
- Automatically
create categorised link pages on templates identical to my
site pages
And
much more. Now, when I link to other sites, I not only get more
traffic visiting my site (and more sales) from those links,
but I get a higher traffic volume from search engines that detect
my link popularity.
I
don't link to everyone, I can afford to be selective and pick
only those with huge traffic volumes that are closely aligned
with what I am selling. Every second day I spend one
hour managing my links. It's much less than I did previously.
And
there's a way you can find affiliates of sites that sell the
same types of product as you and then establish a joint venture
with them. Doesn't it figure that if they sell the same type
of product for someone else, they'll also sell yours? But I
don't want to detail that here because it's off topic. If you're
keen to know about this method used by the heavy hitters, please
email me
here and I'll send you details privately.
Measuring
Progress
At
the end of every month I measure my site popularity, links,
traffic volume, sales, expenses to sales ratio, pay-for-click
search engine placements etc and they are all increasing with
the exception of expenses (I run a very lean operation).
Much
of the increase is directly attributable to the linking and
joint venture programs I set up every week.There
hasn't been a month in the last six months when my statistics
haven't improved.
Where
to Get Arelis 4
Arelis is available
from here
in three versions:
- Free trial version
with limited functionality
- Arelis Standard
is suitable for most users (I use this version) for $US99.95
- Arelis Business
is suitable for businesses that provide a fee-for-service
Internet linking service for other businesses. It costs $US299.95
You
can download a free ebook (in Adobe PDF format) titled "Increase
your link popularity and get targeted traffic with ARELIS"
from here.
It tells you all about Arelis and how it works.
Finally,
you can download a free Link
Popularity Checker program from here
to check the popularity of your site, or others' sites. It's
excellent. I recommend you get this and the free ebook if nothing
else.
I
hope this short article has been of interest to you and that
it helps you increase your sales.
To
your success.
Robin Henry
Principal Adviser, Publisher and Entrepreneur since 1998
DESERT WAVE ENTERPRISES
ABN 61763021714
PO Box 2361
Alice Springs 0871
Northern Territory of Australia
P: +61 8 89534409
F: +61 8 89534409
W: http://www.dwave.com.au
E: query
Copyright 2003 Robin Henry
This item may be freely reproduced or linked to a newsletter
or other item, provided it is not sold and that it is reproduced
in its entirety. If you wish to use it, please email
me a copy of the link where it will be displayed or send me
a copy of your ezine..
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