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. Read on to find out why.

Why Link?
There are only a few ways you can generate traffic to your site. You can pay someone to generate leads, 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 ebook 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 dozen 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. The program automates much of the process so, one evening per week for about two or three hours, I work with it to find and contact potential link partners.

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 compare statistics with the previous month. Slowly, but surely, my site is getting a higher position in search engines and I'm getting more referred traffic from sites with which I have exchanged links.

Link management is a huge topic. If you'd like to read more and download a free software program that will find out within minutes how many sites are linked to yours, visit this page www.dwave.com.au/link-management.html