Having effective Website Linking strategies creates new paths of traffic, customers, lead generation, credibility and trust to your site. The major search engines take this into account, when listing your site.

At the same time for someone to link to your site, you need to give a them reason why, a “what’s in it for me” for the site owner?

Ok, so now you need to tell me why I should link to your site? Give me a reason, is it because you are good looking 😉 or you like me very much (he begs on knees…)

One of the most common ways is that of the reciprocal arrangement, the exchanging of links for mutual benefit- A proven effective way to gain links and should form a part of any low cost linking strategy.

Another method is the affiliate arrangement, where you compensate me for my sales I create at your site. If done correctly a very profitable way as it creates a commission only sales force.

This is one of the most effective Website Linking strategies available and responsible for millions in sales every day.

The value arrangement- This is when you have the largest arrangement of items, information and help for my marketplace. A large site with targeted articles, products and free classifieds would form this model or a free webmaster tool you let me use.

The entertainment arrangement- This is for the sites that provide me with entertainment which then encourages others to share and use the content. The current example of this would be Myspace -the social network.

The Free arrangement –This is where the site provides a free tool or software item, for webmasters to use and links are built into that tool when its in use. The best example of this would be a site that provides free webmaster tools like free web based forms -freedback.com .

In exchange for the easy to use tool, the program has a build in link back to the provider of the tool.

At the same time, very few sites encourage or make it easy, internal or deep linking, which is the linking to internal pages. For example a good article on a pet site should include, link to this article and provide the easy paste, html required to simply copy and paste the link on another site.

Some do have a “link to us” page, which is a start. Still the need for a reason needs to be employed for someone to take action.

As another example, I know of a marketing campaign by a software programmer who sells a product for webmasters selling for $97.00. In exchange for a verified link on a particular Page Rank on your site, he would give away a free full working version of the product (could you do this, with some planning?)

In conclusion, get creative and think outside the box. The budget does not need to large to find a way of getting others to link to you. A digital report or white paper, in Adobe PDF format on a particular focused problem can encourage others to link to you.

There are many effective linking strategies for marketing online at the same time, look at the reason why they should link to you, give a good reason for the webmaster to take action.

It has to be of excellent quality and value – over deliver and you will build trust with your market. Under deliver and it becomes….ho hum…(he yawns…)