Do you know what kind of sites are suitable link partners for your site?

If you do give yourself a gold star since many seem not to. At least based on the questions I get.

You see most think small. Too small. And limit the potential universe of perfectly good linking partners.

In fact many seem to think relevant means "sites exactly like mine". So if they had a site about "juggling midget circus clowns" the small thinkers would say they could only trade links with other juggling midget circus clown sites.

Hogwash.

I call this stinkin' linkin' thinkin' and frankly it drives me crazy! Because there are any number of related sites that have little to do with juggling midget circus clowns that are still perfectly good link partners. Because their visitors are just like the ones the owner of the clown site covets.

Remember too you typically get three things out of any link trade

PR (pagerank)

Traffic

Link Reputation (from the link text you use)

Almost any link trade should give you PR and Link Rep. While trading links with relevant sites will get you traffic. Some more than others naturally.

But Here’s the Big Idea: When you think relevant you really want to think in terms of related families of sites.

In the case of juggling midget circus clowns that would include

• personal clown sites
  

• clown training
  

• balloon sculpting
  

• face painting
  

• clown costumes
  

Broadening the scope a tad …

• circus companies
  

• family circus
  

• ringmaster schools
  

• circus books and videos
  

A bit further afield would be …

• juggling sites
  

• juggling suppliers
  

• juggling training site
  

plus if any such sites exist …

• lion tamers
  

• trapeze artists
  

• mime
  

• fire eating
  

But I’d even go as far as ...

• kids entertainment
  

• birthday party sites
  

• or magicians even.
  

All of which says the juggling midget circus clown site owner has a whole world of potential link partners that would be able to deliver up appropriate traffic. And even if one didn’t flood her site with traffic getting two out of three (PR and Link Reputation) still ain’t bad.

Okay but say you’re drawing a blank when it comes to related sites. Here’s a short cut that can light your linking efforts on fire. Since it gives you a quick feel for appropriate types of sites to approach for links.

Type "YOUR KEYWORD resources" (with the quotes) into the Google search box and hit enter. Obviously replacing YOUR KEYWORD with your focus or theme keyword phrase.

This search will return all sorts of links pages and directories. Clicking on the listings returned will quickly reveal related types of sites others are using as link partners.

For instance entering "clown resources" returned among others this site www.clownresourcedirectory.com. By itself this one alone would give the owner of the juggling midget circus clowns all the relevant site ideas she’d ever need. Plus it can turn up some decent linking partners too!

So banish stinkin' linkin' thinkin' from your mind right now. Don’t handcuff your linking efforts by thinking small. Instead think big. Expand your linking universe like this and soon you’ll expand the number of links you’ve got to ride to higher Google rankings.

Copyright 2004 John Gergye

John Gergye shares more ideas like this in his just updated eBook "Traffic From Google in 35 Days". Find out more here: http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/j/tfg35cl.shtml. Or test your search engine IQ by taking his seo quiz http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/search-engine-quiz.shtml and get the free special report "Coming Out On Top".