A few link trading basics

1. Search Engines rank pages not websites.
2. Relevant link trading does work and will always work because it’s good for your users.
3. You may not have control over who links to you, but you do have control over who you link to. Let’s face it when you place links on your site to other sites you are recommending these sites. Make sure you place them on a relevant page and make sure they are worthy of linking to. I think that Search engines do take into account who you link to and that your site will gain authority by linking to sites the help the user.
4. Avoid placing links in big lists on a links pages, or making a “links” directory.
5. Don’t try and cheat on links. The experienced SEO will see it in a second, drop your link and keep you from trading with all the sites that they are working on. So you’ll lose way more than you’d ever gain.
6. You can also trade image ads and use alt tags to diversify your backlink portfolio.

Emailing link trade requests

1. Send personalized emails. If you can find a name use it. You can also include their domain in the subject line.
2. It is a common courtesy to place their link on your site first, although I’m seeing less and less of this.
3. Don’t send emails that say you’ve just deleted their link or something like that when you’ve never really traded with them. With Lavalinx I know all the sites that I’ve traded with and I can easily search them. Yes this method gets my attention, but then it just annoys me when I find out that I’ve never traded with them and they’re just using it as a hook to get a better open rate.

Pages that links are placed on

1. Ideally you’ll want your link on a content page or blog post with your links placed contextually within relevant content.
2. The page needs to be indexed and cached in Google.
3. Don’t worry about Page Rank. Too many webmaster get caught in this trap.
4. The page should be related to the page on your site that the link is pointed to.
5. Make sure no link cheating methods are being used, for instance:

a. nofollows in links or in the meta tags
b. javascript links or redirects
c. links in frames
d. links in iframes
e. robots.txt disallowing the page your link is placed on.
f. Some pages even with Page Rank may not be indexed.

Your anchor and link description

1. In your anchor text use the keywords that user would use to search for your service or products in the search engines.
2. If possible, place your anchor text contextually within your description
3. Diversify your anchor text backlinks. For example if your site is about online education use online education, online degrees, online classes, online schools etc in your anchor text
4. have your links point to more than your homepage. Remember Search Engines rank pages not websites.