By GEOFF CAPLAN

Did you know that web linkage is responsible
for a significant amount of web traffic?

Search engines are still extremely important
but many of the most successful e-commerce sites
claim that linkage programs offer a tremendous
source of web traffic.

It makes sense. The nature of the World Wide
Web encourages serious web surfers to navigate
from site to site through the links to other
related sites and resources "found" on the sites
that are visited. People sometimes forget that
the name "web" itself is based on an extensive
interweaving of sites, similar to links in a
chain.

It’s important for any site owner to seek out
and invite related web sites to "exchange"
reciprocal links. The site being invited should
be interesting, provide good links and present
useful, relevant information that complements
what you are already presenting.


A web site with an extensive listing of quality
links offers several advantages. First, the
site is perceived as being a useful resource,
and justifies revisits. Second, it’s more
effective than just placing banner advertising
on other sites, since a reciprocal hyperlink is
considered to be more believable. Finally, it
helps your site’s ranking with search engines
that place some importance on link popularity.
This is especially important with Google
and AltaVista.

Business-to-business web sites require extensive
research to seek out, invite and establish
appropriate reciprocal links with other sites.
For others, "non strategic," or general links
to other sites can be established quickly by
checking out some of the reciprocal link exchange
services that exist for free on the Web.

A word of caution about reciprocal links. Be sure
your site includes navigation within the HTML code
to prevent your site visitor from leaving entirely.
A simple method to prevent this is to modify the
links so that a new browser window opens. This can
be done simply by adding a "target" attribute to
the links, and set it to the value "_blank".