Bill Koelzer, "The Web Marketer"


Driving People to Your Site: Banners and Links Pay Off

Reciprocal links and banner exchanges are essentially, "I’ll link to you if you’ll link to me." Banner exchanging is a variation of link exchanging—"I’ll put your banner on my site if you’ll put my banner on your site."

Both strategies increase the chances that people will find your site. As an added incentive for you, most major search engines place your site higher in their summaries based on how many pages link to it, which is another reason to get as many links to your site as you can. So, with whom do you set up reciprocal links, and where? How do you go about exchanging banners? Are these strategies worth the time and effort?

Linking with Others

You and your realty office do business with many firms who do not compete with you. Some are your suppliers, some are vendors, some are even companies owned by your clients. Some are title firms, appraisers, mortgage companies, loan agents, insurers, storage facilities, truck rental agencies, window blind installers, painters, landscapers, maid services, and dozens more.

Search the Web to find the firms in such categories WHO ARE IN THE CITIES YOU SERVE and who have a strong Internet presence. (If you can find them easily, so might others. And if they find your link there and are interested in buying or selling a home, they might just go to your site.)

You find non-competing but realty-related sites by searching on Google (www,google.com) using key word phrases like, "Tacoma appraisers," "Manhattan mortgages," "Cleveland landscapers" and so on. Then send them an e-mail inviting them to exchange links or banner ads with you. There are no costs to doing this and only win-win potential for both of you.

Sample e-mail:

Subject Line: Local (City Name) Realtor(R) will help YOU get more leads.

(Note---Your "Subjects" are VERY important in quickly showing the recipient that you are not sending him more SPAM.)

Dear Webmaster of http://www.(domain of target Web site):

You will likely gain additional monthly inquiries and sales if you have a free link or banner on my Realtor(R) ’s web site at http:// www. (domain name).

And I would be happy to give you such a link on my (City Name) "Home-related Services" page at http:// www (domain name).com/Local-Services.

In return, perhaps you’d be willing to post my link or banner for free in YOUR web site on page http:// www, (domain name). Here attached is one of my banners and here is the text I have written for a text link and the page that the link goes to.

Waterfront Property—Buying? Selling?

Be Confident Using a 20-year Specialist

(Link goes to http://www.BreezyBeachieAgent.com)

Just send me your text and link address and I can get you in MY site within three days.

If you’d like to call me, I can be reached days at: _____________ and nights at:________.

In (city name) I often hear about people planning to improve their home before selling it long before they get around to using services such as yours. It’s the same for home buyers who remodel. I could give you their leads if you would agree to let ME know when you hear about an upcoming home sale. Meanwhile, I hope that you will consider swapping links or banners with me. We can each benefit from doing so and best of all, there is no cost involved.

After you email

Don’t be discouraged. Not every site owner is smart enough to exchange links with you. To be sure that they understand your offer, be sure to follow up with a phone call. For these people, once you explain how a link exchange works, most are willing to exchange links or ads with you.

Remember that your target for reciprocal links and banners are firms that serve your target audiences from a "commercial contracting" or "housekeeping," "maintenance" or "repair" standpoint. In your own regional area, such firms also include roofers, contractors, repair people, electricians, plumbers, telephone service firms, and dozens more—you get the idea. First, however, check to be certain that you are not at any legal risk in your state by "recommending" vendors to your visitors on your site.

Banner exchange services

"Banner exchange" firms can help you increase your exposure by displaying a banner of yours on a number of Web sites in ex-change for your displaying a rotating banner of theirs—actually, of one of their clients—on your site. Usually, you get a banner exposure for yourself for a certain number of times that someone clicks on the banner of theirs that is displayed on your site. Some banner exchange firms are more generous, giving you two views for every three that you provide. The banners of all participants in the exchange are of the same size. Thus, banners can be rotated within the "banner frames" placed on the Web sites of banner exchange members. For more information, go to http://www.linkexchange.com.

Bottom line on banner exchanges.

It’s probably not worth the bother, cost, and reduced speed in page loading on your site just to have more people who are unlikely to be buying your niche-related product see your banner. However, if you sell a retail product nationwide that anyone can buy anywhere, banner exchanges may help your sales. Note, too, that having different banners show up on one of your web pages may confuse your visitors as to why the banner is there, plus its presence can conflict with the layout and design colors on your page.

Affiliations

With affiliations, a link from your site takes visitors to some other site. If the visitor buys something at the other site, like a book, CD, or poster, you get a commission. Note that this does not bring visitors to your site. In fact, it sends your hard-won visitors off to some other place on the Internet. Affiliations are probably not worth your time and energy. An exception is when you offer a "store" as a sub-part of your web site and its primary function is more a service to your visitors than as a profit center for your firm.

An example would be a realty chain that has a web site section from which Realtors? can easily order gifts for clients at the close of escrow. Products in this vein often include Omaha Steaks (http://www.OmahaSteaks.com., Maine Lobsters (http://www.maine-lobster.com), Harry and David (http://www.harry-david.com) and others.

Conclusions

Bottom line? The reciprocal exchange of banners and links can work well for you if they are done with local web sites---ones within the cities that you serve. In addition, they should be done with firms that are in some way realty- or home improvement- or relocation-related. Why? So that you can reach more of your target audiences. Remember, in positioning yourself on the web, you want to be there, waiting, in exactly the places that your target audiences are likely to go.

Establishing good rapport and trusting working relationships with such non-competitive firms can, after just a few years, become one of a Realtor(R) ’s most powerful ways to get more web site popularity that makes a web site show up higher on search engines, and, best of all, get more sales.

? William Koelzer, 2001


 

HOME