A part of SEO is having a links page. The first reason is to provide your customers with relevant web sites. Some people feel why give a potential customer the opportunity to leave your site for one of your link partners. The truth is if your visitors don’t want your product they will leave any way and if they do want your product they will buy.

The second reason for link partners is page ranking. The search engines do look at your links page. If you have relevant links pointing well ranked sites, then it’s a plus. If on the other hand you fill your links page with tons of irrelevant sites then you might get penalized. Remember, search engines look for relevant content. Don’t get fooled into paying a company that promises to get you tons of traffic by making your page look like a link farm. Finding good link partners takes time and some common sense.

Here are a few tips when getting link partners.

Page Design – When you come across a site you find interesting see if you can easily find their Links or Resource link.

Click Through - How many times do you need to click before you find the page you want to be in? Two clicks should be the most. Some site won’t even trade links if it’s more than a click away.

Depth of Links - How many links do you see there? If you need to scroll down to get see all the links then it’s too many. Google states they don’t like to see more than fifty links on each page. This is why some sites Links p

age will require two clicks. The first click will take you to a category page and the second click will bring you into the actual link page of your choice. Now here’s a tip when looking at how many links are on a page. Are the links alphabetized or are added chronologically? If their added chronologically then expect to be added at the bottom. But if it’s done alphabetically then you can decide how far up you want to be. When adding a link you're always asked to give the title of your page. This doesn’t mean the URL. Your URL could be www.topcycles.com. But you could literally enter your title as “#1 Cycle Store” and be placed on top of the list.

Page Rank - Don’t get caught up in Google’s page rank. My site www.endbalding.com held a rank of 5 and then out of the blue went to zero. Needless to say I give Google the finger and don’t rely on them for rankings.

One last piece of advice when you get contacted via email from another web site stating they love your site and took the liberty of adding your link to their page. They’ll have a link showing where they’ve placed your page on. You click it and wow your either the only one on the page or very high on the list. That’s great but you need to visit their home page and look at their design. Some of these sites won’t even have a links page. So how are going to be found by visitors? You won’t.

This is not the norm. There are plenty of honest people seeking link trade partners. You just need to use good judgment when accepting link trades. One good link partner is worth more than 20 bad ones.