Inbound links, that is text hyperlinks from other websites, has been proven to be one of the most effective methods for driving targeted traffic to a website. Targeted visitors are those already searching for your type of product, so they're "pre-qualified." That's the best kind of web traffic to have.

It's easy but very time-consuming to arrange with other sites to link to yours, but it's usually free, so well worth the effort. There are "criteria" that will make your site one that others will want to link to; and standards your link partner sites ought to measure up to as well. Some of these criteria help to determine whether your site will be ranked higher by Google, an important consideration for getting your listing to appear higher in a search.

Your research should ask these questions and cover these issues:

• What value does your site offer visitors from a linking site? Do you offer products or services that complement theirs? If your site is simply a product "catalog," you'll want to create real content such as articles, helpful tips, tools, special reports, weekly or daily updates, interactive areas, etc.
• What kind of site do you want as a link partner? Go to your favorite search engine and conduct a search for your type of product, or a related product or service, then visit the sites that appear in the listing. If you sell a unique hand wax for cars, logical link partner sites might be those for car enthusiasts and parts for classic cars.
• How "qualified" is that potential link partner? Sites you locate through searching in Yahoo! or the Open Directory (www.dmoz.org) are usually quality sites. And one way to check how "popular" your potential partner is, is to install the Google toolbar on your web browser. It's free and it helps you see the page rank of every site you visit. Get the toolbar (free) at http://toolbar.Google.com. It downloads easily and quickly and is a wonderful tool.

With the Google toolbar in place, visit any website and look at the "Page Rank" measuring bar at the top of the page, in the new toolbar. As an example, visit Microsoft.com and notice how the Page Rank color is completely green. That indicates a page rank of 10 (the highest). If you visit www.LAFlowerDistrict.com, you'll see the page rank green area is about four or five, which is a pretty good showing on the Google page rank scale.

When you have link partner sites with a good ranking on the Google toolbar, the links to your site are viewed as more significant and that improves your site's ranking, too. So try to get partners with page rank as high or higher than yours.

Link Farms and Other Offers

Avoid services that promise you "thousands of links," whether free or not. These border on "spam" in the search engines' viewpoint and are more likely to get your site rejected than accepted.

Reciprocal Links

Trading links is a good thing, when both sites meet the above criteria. To do this, you'll either include the outgoing link (to the other site) on your already established web page or create a special "Links" or "Resources" page. However you display the links, make sure they include a text description of the site being linked to.

In some cases, link partners may request the use of content included on your site, which they will display on their site in exchange for links.

How Many Links?

There's no magic number of links required to get a high page ranking. In fact, sometimes page rank depends more on the quality of links than on the quantity. If you have six inbound links from sites with a Google page rank of eight, for example, that alone could elevate your site's ranking much higher than 100 low-ranking sites. And remember that the content of the linking sites plays into the picture, too. Content in some way related to yours will boost your ranking.

Requesting Links

When contacting a site owner about a link, keep your email message simple and provide the required information:

• Your name, title/position and URL for your site
• The URL of their site or the page where your link information would fit best
• A good reason for the link ("your product complements my service in this way….")
• What you like about their site
• The URL on your site where you would include a link to their site
• How you would like your link (on their site) to be displayed (Provide the exact description of your site or product). If you have a graphic image, perhaps a button or logo, tell them the URL of the web page where they can capture the image.

Tracking Links

Keep a log of the sites that have agreed to link to yours, and periodically check their sites to be sure the links are still active. Be sure to keep the date contacted and the name and email address (or phone number) of the contact person in case you need to get in touch.

Don't be discouraged if it takes a few weeks to get a response to your initial inquiry. Wait a month before contacting them again.

Contact Peggi Ridgway, author of Successful Website Marketing, a workbook for small business websites, at peg@wordpix.com or visit www.mywebsavvy.com.