Selecting A Website

Imagine the ideal prototype site you would like to find and have link to you. It should contain information relevant to your web site and reach an audience who would be interested in your web site. A link to your web site should make sense for this site and even enhance the value of this site. Furthermore this site should look professional and give the impression that it will be around for a while. After you do this for a while, you will develop a second sense when you come across one of these 'perfect' sites. But until then, let's break down the factors....

Content You will want your link prospect sites to have similar content to your web site. It does not have to be identical, but there should be a tie-in that makes sense.

Example A.
A resort in Maui, Hawaii, might approach...
- Hawaii vacation guide sites
- a Maui business directory site
- honeymoon related web sites

Example B.
A nationwide florist specializing in roses might approach....
- web sites which contain directories of on-line florists
- sites which already link to other florists
- sites which give Valentine's Day / Mother's Day gift suggestions

Audience

When evaluating link prospect sites, ask yourself what type of audience the prospect has. Then determine if your web site would be of interest to this audience.

In example B, visitors looking for suggestions for a Valentine's Day gift might very well be interested in a nationwide florist specializing in roses.

Non-competing

You will want to take special care to determine if your link prospect site competes with you in any way. If so, you will want to immediately eliminate them from your list. If you are in direct competition, they won't link to you, and they might even use a variation of your link request letter to start a link promotion campaign of their own!

Link-friendly

A good prospect does not have to have a dedicated links page (a special page containing numerous outgoing links), but it is a good sign if they have one or more links to related sites someplace within their web site. Rationale: A webmaster who has linked to outside sites in the past is more likely to respond favorably to a link request.

Professional

Make sure your prospect sites look professional. Do they look like they were slapped together in a matter of minutes? Is their content severely out of date? Does their web site consist of mostly brightly flashing banners? If you have a bad feeling about a web site, rule it out and save yourself the time.

Do they have their own domain name?

In general search engines look more favorably on sites which have their own domain (e.g. companyabc.com) versus sites hosted on free web space (e.g. geocities.com/ personal/maryjane/mysite.htm). You may want to take this into account when selecting sites to approach.

Estimated traffic Ideally, you will want to approach sites which are heavily trafficked. Sometimes you can tell by the nature of the site (e.g. it is obvious that UsaToday.com receives more traffic than your local weekly newspaper web site). Other times, it is not so simple.