Keeping Track of Your Link Exchanges

By Joop Liefaard
Posted Wednesday, September 22, 2004

All of us want to increase traffic to our web sites. It helps our search engine rankings, and provides us with potential new customers. One of the best, and certainly least expensive, ways to do that is by exchanging links with sites similar to our own. However, you don't have to accumulate very many links before it becomes difficult to keep track of them all. Many of them have similar sounding (or identical!) names, descriptions and even URL's. Let me suggest a simple way to keep track of them so you don't embarrass yourself and annoy others by requesting to exchange links with someone more than once.

Create a simple spread sheet with four columns and no more that 51 rows; one row for titling your columns, and 50 for listing links. Search engines do not like link pages with more than 50 links, so if you make your spread sheet only capable of holding 50 items, you won't exceed that arbitrary level. Each link page on your site will be a separate sheet in your spread sheet file. You can rename the tabs along the bottom to match the page titles on your web site if that helps you keep track.

Your four columns will be "Title," "Description," "Page/Location," and "URL." Take the first link page on your site and just type in the info. Copy and paste may or may not work as some software insists on copying the hyperlink info as well and makes necessary stuff like wrapping text difficult or impossible. The page/location column is used to code which link page you have the placed the reciprocal link onto, and where up and down the page. For instance, the first link on your page one is coded 1.01. The 12th link on page 2 is coded 2.12. The 18th link on page 3 is coded 3.18, and so on. Once you have done that, have your software alphabetize the page. The links will then be arranged in alphabetical order so you can easily find whatever you are looking for. Additions to not-yet-completed pages can just be added to the bottom, and then re-alphabetized. Try it!
Sandi Moses has been involved in internet marketing since November, 2003. Visit her site at (http://www.123iwork4me.com).

About the Author
None