The Link Site Web Marketing Strategy

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
Web Marketing Today, Issue 13, May 11, 1996

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Times they are a-changing. Once upon a time, say 6 or 8 months ago, you could put up a Web site, advertise it on the major Web search engines, and expect some significant traffic. Since then the Internet has grown exponentially. You'd think more people would find you. Sometimes, however, it's fewer. Your Web site is lost in cyberspace.

With 16 million Web pages or so indexed by AltaVista, how can you get proper attention? Three things not to do:

• Give up
• Stop listing your site on Web search engines
• Wait passively for someone to come

The linking strategy has two phases:

Phase 1

Make sure you ask for links to every page in your field or industry that will link to you. You can find many of these sites on listed on my "Promoting your Web Site" page (http://www.wilsonweb.com/webmarket/promote.htm). But what if the link page(s) in your field want to charge for a link? Move to phase 2.

Phase 2

Establish your own link page for your field or industry, and make it the most complete. You'll have to work at this, but with time and persistence you can make your link page the place to come to find links to, say, the Indonesian crafts market. You'll provide a service to your competitors, of course. But if you are the host, guess whose banner ad is at the top of the page? With the glut of Web sites out there we have to help one another this way, or we'll be lost in cyberspace ourselves!

A variation on this is to host the Web page linking all the businesses in your geographic community, and then try to get Yahoo to carry it in their regional section. This is a particularly good strategy if yours is a local business. Local ISPs are likely to accept only their own customers' links. Chambers of commerce may only accept members. Let yours be the "free" source for links. And with the traffic you'll attract attention to your banner ad.

I have used this strategy since September 1995 with the Web Marketing Info Center (http://www.wilsonweb.com/webmarket/). While I don't normally recommend links from your Web site to other "cool spots on the Web" (why send people out the door?), this is the exception. On a strategic link page you are generating traffic you would not otherwise get. I find that perhaps 10% of the people who visit my link page come to the section of my Web site where I am selling Web page design, on-line stores, and consulting. This week approximately 667 people entered the "front door" of "Web Marketing Info Center".

The advantage of this strategy is that you can aggressively promote your "service" link site, and it doesn't look like you are just doing self-promotion. More places will link to your link site than to your core business front door.

Since we began this site it has received a modest amount of press coverage, both on- and off-line. In October, Your Company magazine "discovered" this site, bringing a flood of traffic. It has also been positively noticed by Web Review, Who's Marketing On-Line, an unsolicited spammer, Home Office Computing, and many others. Your strategic link site will probably be listed in an article on the Internet in your industry's trade publications (if you send them a news release), bringing many visitors.

Is this a legitimate service in the crowded information marketplace? By all means! Will it help your business? Yes, if you will work very diligently

1. to make it the best and most complete, and
2. to market it day in and day out using every channel known to you.