Managing Your Reciprocal Links
Directory
By
Donald Nelson, copyright 2005
Reciprocal linking is an
inevitable part of the life of any webmaster. Incoming links
are valuable because the rankings in Google depend in large
part on the amount and quality of these links, and because
incoming links provide a steady stream of traffic.
While most discussions on reciprocal linking deal with the
problems of getting links and finding partners, an equally big
problem is how to manage a link directory and handle the
numerous requests for reciprocal links sent to you even after
you have ceased trying to get new links.
There are many webmasters who just delete these requests, in
the same way that they delete other unsolicited e-mail.
Handling link requests manually takes a lot of time. You must
first go online, look at the site that has sent you a request.
Then, if you want to link to them you have to edit the html
page where you keep your links, upload it and finally write an
email to the person who has requested the link and inform her
that the link is now active. If you get three or four link
requests in one day (as I got today), processing them could
take up a good part of your morning.
I hardly ever deleted these requests but put them in a pending
folder which I never got around to dealing with, until I
finally decided to find an automated way to handle this work.
I shopped around and found a site that provides a link
management service for the price of $20 per month. They set up
your links directory, and once it is in place, all link
requests must come through a form placed on your site. When
someone fills out the form you get notification.
You go online and look at the request, and if you like it you
“press a button” and approve the link. The link is
automatically placed on the proper page of your directory and
an email gets sent to the person who requested the link. It
would take just a few minutes to handle a link request in this
way.
However, I wasn’t ready to pay $20 a month for this service
and looked around for another solution. There are software
programs which, when installed on your own server, do the same
kind of directory management but at a far lower price. I found
one such software, a PHP script that uses a MySQL data base.
The price was great, free of charge. However I had trouble
installing it, and wanted to try one of the low cost link
management programs that I also came upon during my search for
a solution to this problem.
Finally I settled on Reciprocal Link Manager (http://tinyurl.com/5yjkw).
What tipped me in favor of the program is that the owner
himself uses it on his own sites. I paid $67, and got a PHP
script. The directions for uploading the files, changing the
file permissions on the server and setting up a MySQL data
base were very easy to follow and I set up the directory on a
few of my websites without any problem.
The Reciprocal Link Manager produces static pages that are
search engine friendly. It is also easy to customize the
directory to look like the rest of your site. In addition you
can import your old links into your new directory.
The program provides all the functionality of the more
expensive online services and gives you a system which enables
you to handle several link requests in a very short time. In
addition, one component of the program helps you to find new
link partners, add their site details to your directory and
send reciprocal link requests to them.
Now whenever links are sent to me, if they fit with the theme
of my site I add them immediately, instead of deleting them or
stuffing them in a folder that I will never get a chance to
deal with. If you would like to save time, but also continue
to build your site’s link directory, I recommend that you go
for an automated solution to the task of link management.
Donald
Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He has
been working on the Internet since 1995, and is currently the
director of A1-Optimization (http://www.a1-optimization.com),
a firm providing low cost search engine optimization,
submission and web promotion services.
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