Exchanging links with like sites is always a great way to build traffic and relationships. Perhaps if we talk to each other about our sites we can identify related sites to our own help each other build traffic.<br /><br />So whats your web community about?<br /><br />

Well, this is one of my favorites. While exchanging links is a great way to build traffic, you probably don't even have to link to any sites to get links to yours!<br /><br />If your website has some unique or just plain good content, and a fair user base, you will likely get many links just by being alive.<br /><br />Ways to increase those links are with a "link to us" section, for one. Provide HTML code, images in different sizes, banners, and other methods for fellow websites to link to you. In most cases, the sites that link to you add a link to your site with an image or banner as a feature added to their site, not as a favor to you.<br /><br />The link exchanges are a friendly thing to do, but I find that I have to go track down all of the websites that link to me to do that. There are websites that will track the outside-in links to your website. I will post a link later on.<br /><br />If you’re into exchanges, check with other popular websites in your field and talk with the advertising people about a 1:1 banner impression trade. Unless they’re a very large site or have all of their impressions sold, in which case you’ll have to be a similarly-sized or in-demand website to do a trade with them, you’ll likely get turned down, or just get a template response.<br /><br />In which case, say thanks and go post to their forum (if they have one) with a related ad to your website… chances are they won’t delete it if they are big enough to turn down a banner trade.<br /><br />But, don’t get discouraged, as there are many websites that will do a trade… all types, shapes, sizes and forms of sites. It’s fun to track your stats on other sites, too… “play the click-through game” with them and possibly increase the credibility of your site further if your numbers are better.<br /><br />Cheers!<br /><br />Muhammad Chishti<br />Creative dIRECTOR<br /><A HREF="http://www.imcuniverse.com" target="_new">http://www.imcuniverse.com</A>

Muhammad,<br />About providing banners and buttons for people to link in... One concern would be for external sites to reference the banner images directly from my site... would you happen to know if the standard practice is to allow this, or whether to request for people to copy the graphic and serve it from their server?<br /><br />Stephan<br /><br /><br />

Stephan,<br /><br />Well it varies. While with most images you will tell the users to download the image and use it as a linking banner/image, there are cases where they would code it directly back to your site. It's kind of like, "I'm linking to you so why shouldn't I leech this image off of your server?" - and in a sense that's true - they are "leeching" your bandwidth but also linking to your site. So when it comes down to it, those links to your site (if they involve images) are not obtained completely without cost.<br /><br />When I generate linking boxes and such for others to cut and paste code into their page, I reference images. See at <A HREF="http://www.tiertown.com/link.shtml" target="_new">http://www.tiertown.com/link.shtml</A><br /><br />But, if I expected a large number of sites to link to me... would I still reference the images to my own server? OF COURSE! But, I'm talking about for-profit sites... personal or nonprofit sites might think differently about being friendly about bandwith to attract users to their site. It's just a choice you will have to make if you are super concerned with bandwidth.<br /><br />But, before I decided to not reference images, or allow "leeching" by sites linking to me, I would place the images that they were to use in a separate directory so you could track exactly how much bandwidth it was absorbing, and if you could afford it.<br /><br />Hope this helps,<br /><br />Muhammad Chishti<br />Creative dIRECTOR<br />[:white]<A HREF="http://www.imcuniverse.com" target="_new">http://www.imcuniverse.com</A></font color=white>

That helps a lot, thanks!<br /><br />