MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

“Link Value is the perceived value another site will derive from linking to you. The more value they see, the more likely they will be to link.” - Ken McGaffin

Reciprocal links seem to be the order of the day, but very rarely offer significant value to either of the parties involved. Many feel reciprocal links offer the most immediate value to most sites.

One-way links are (obviously) much more productive. One-way links are links created when a webmaster likes your site and wants to encourage his/her site visitors to have a look at your site, for whichever reason that may be. One-way links are really difficult to obtain and need many hours of creativity, hard work, and effort. However, the returns in the areas of site traffic, qualified prospects and sales could be fairly large.

In order to convince other sites to offer you a one-way link, your site’s link value needs to be optimised. The more value they see in your site, the more likely they are to link to you. In order to “sell” your site to them, you need to ask yourself these 3 questions:
- What value is the linking site getting from your site?
- What value do you offer the linking site’s readers?
- What value does the associated traffic bring to your business?

To add link value to your site, the following steps can be taken:
- Content value and the value it offers potential site visitors cannot be forgotten. Constant review of content is important. You might be able to re-package this content into special reports or guides. The idea is to make the reports address specific client needs.
- Fresh material addressing client needs is a good ploy, especially in the form of articles, hints, tips, and reports. This material should be specifically aimed at your target market. Having link-worthy material for each target market is also important.
- Creating interactive, attention grabbing functions takes a fair investment of time and resources. However, the long-term rewards in increased profile and increased traffic to your site will make it all worth while.

The importance of link value cannot be underestimated. Thru understanding and building the link value of your site, you will notice that your link requests will succeed more and that other sites will link to you without question.

Depending on the quality of your site, obtaining one-way links should not prove to be a problem. Needless to say, your PageRank also enjoys significant increases associated with more unique site visits. But for the small, start-up site with a page rank of 0 or 1, finding one-way links may prove difficult or impossible to do. In that case, the unfavoured reciprocal link becomes an asset, and possibly the only stepping stone towards one-way link stardom.

So I ask: are reciprocal links possibly as important, if not more important, than one-way links?