How do you make more money online? Increase your online visibility! And how do you increase your online visibility? Driving traffic to your website is key. Achieving and maintaining a high ranking with the search engines is a definite must.

The best way to achieve these directives is to link and be linked with similar websites. This is called, reciprocal linking. If all of this seems a little confusing to you, keep reading because I'm going to give you a free tool that is most likely one of the best resources you will ever find for increasing your visibility, gaining higher traffic, and reaching better rankings with the search engines.

Let's back up a little bit though and explain what reciprocal linking is and does.

You create a reciprocal link by placing a link on your website to someone else's website. They, in turn, will do the same. As an example, take a look at the Ideas For Home Businesses Motivation, Coaching and Goal Setting Resource page. Scroll down and you will notice a link for "The Realgoalgetter Website", along with a description about the website. Now, let's look at The Realgoalgetter Website. Scroll down and you will notice a link back to "Ideas For Home Businesses", on the left side margin!

These are reciprocal links. We each found value in one another's websites. We also found that our websites, while not dealing with the same subject, complimented each other quite well. Furthermore, we both realized that the other's site was a valuable, high ranking, reputable site that our visitors would appreciate. All of these points are extremely important when deciding whether to accept a reciprocal link. Personally, I have declined over 100 requests for links for varying reasons. Some of the sites were poor quality with very low rankings. Others did not relate in any way to home business. Some were link factories. While still others had annoying pop ups, pop unders, or automatic downloads of Gator or Gain Publishing. I could not see the value in these sites and as such, I felt sure my visitors wouldn't appreciate a link to those sites.

You must, at all times, keep the interests of your visitors your foremost priority. If you feel they would not appreciate a link to a particular site, regardless of the reason - don't do it. I cannot stress this enough to you - Only link with websites that are reputable and hold value to your visitors!

Now you may be asking yourself a few questions right about now. How does creating reciprocal links increase your search engine ranking? How do you find good quality, valuable and similar sites to link with (aside from surfing the net 24/7)? We'll answer those questions now.

When the search engine robots look at your site, one of the criteria for ranking you is your in-going and out-going links. However, when looking at that they also look at the site you're linking with. If it is a link farm, they penalize your site for linking with it. These robots have become much more intelligent in their ranking criteria than you realize. Personally, I'm glad for it! Otherwise, link farms would always rank the highest in all the search engines and I find little to no value in those sites. Hopefully, you're like me and you want sites that hold content rather than fluff.

Now, to answer your question about how you find sites to link with. Previously, you did have to search the net to find good sites, send them an email, hope that someone read your email and wait for a reply. As you can imagine, this was not only time consuming, it was tiring, unproductive and yielded few responses. Luckily, because my website was built using Site Build It! the Value Exchange reciprocal linking tool was included free of charge. I am passing along this amazing and free tool to you. Trust me, you will thank me for this! I was completely blown away with how easy it was to use and the amazing response I received!

How complicated and time consuming is this? Not at all! What you do is input the simple information requested (URL, keywords, site description, etc) and click to register and search for value exchanges. You will receive a list of sites you matched keywords with, along with emails from members who want to exchange with you. Review your list of sites received, decide whether you'd like to exchange with them and if you do, an automatic email is sent to them, requesting a link. It's really that easy!

Check out the Value Exchange today! Before I took part in the Value Exchange, my site ranking was 3.7 million out of 16.5+ million total sites. In less than three weeks the Ideas For Home Businesses Alexa ranking was 275 thousand and it's climbing every day. That put IFHB in the top 3%! Aside from the Value Exchange, I owe the popularity of IFHB to Site Build It! and the great resources that came along with it. Yes, I did the work and am dedicated to IFHB but Site Build It! made it easier and much more enjoyable than I thought possible!

Oh! I almost forgot!
Check out the Site Build It! Sweepstakes for your chance to win!!!

About the Author

The author, Dawn Roberts, is the creator of www.Ideas-For-Home-Businesses.com - your complete home business resource. IFHB will help you from the planning stage, straight through to marketing your ideas for home businesses! Learn how you can start, maintain and propel a phenomenally successful home based business!