As a rule of thumb, the more sites that link to you, and the more ‘on target' they are with your own site, the better it is for your search engine traffic. So getting linked/listed on these sites does help.
Exchanging links with other websites is one of the more tedious aspects of website promotion. That's because you cannot effectively automate the process. Any website promotion expert will tell you the same thing. You simply have to bear down and do it, one link at a time. What makes it even more unexciting is that you cannot just do your link exchange chores for a couple of intensive weeks, and then put it behind you. Doing it right requires an on-going effort that takes months. To get its full benefit you must be constantly on the lookout for useful links. And you must be constantly going out there and creating links.
If this is all a bit foreign to you, let's start with the basics: There are two kinds of links: "outbound" links and "inbound" links. Outbound links are links on your site that point to other websites. Inbound links point from outside sites to specific pages within your site. Therefore, as you can see, any specific link is both outbound and inbound, depending on your point of view. A link on your site — www.yoursite.com — pointing to our site — www.scoja.com — is outbound for you, and inbound for us
The goal is to get Inbound links to your site because these bring traffic from the other site to yours. Putting links on your site linking to other sites does you no good. All you’d be doing is taking your hard-earned traffic and sending it away.
As you will find, often you cannot get inbound links without giving the other site a link in return. In other words getting links often involves a trade. This is what is referred to as a "Link Exchange."
There are several advantages to getting links and doing link exchanges. First, links from sites that share your same target audience create an important source of direct traffic to your site. A visitor to a linked site sees the link to yours, clicks on it, and becomes your visitor. Some estimates put the percentage of internet traffic resulting from this kind of link as high as 21% of total traffic.
Why do people click on these links? …Because they often view a link to an outside source as an endorsement. They assume the webmaster is saying "Here is a source you will find interesting or helpful." This makes most webmasters hesitant to give outbound links unless they are likely to get something in return. No webmaster willingly redirects traffic away from their own site unless they think the visitor will benefit. The trade off is that they will get something in return. Sometimes the linked-to site is a helpful source for website visitors. Sometimes they get a valuable reciprocal link. Sometimes you should be prepared to pay for links if the site warrants it. After all, an inbound link without having to do a real link exchange can be worth its weight in gold if the site is highly ranked and gets lots of traffic.
Getting links (whether you have to trade for them or not) from popular sites serves two purposes: firstly it provides direct traffic from the users that click on that link and come to your site. But there is also another major advantage. Search engines (Google especially) gives you big points for being listed on some other popular site. The more popular that site is and the more relevant it is to your site, the more weight search engines give to the fact that it links to you. Think of it as a popularity contest. If a well-trafficked, highly credible site links to you, search engines figure you must be okay and will increase your own rank as a result. So aside from the direct traffic you get from the link, you also get indirect traffic in that search engines will elevate your status in their grand scheme of algorithms to determine where you come up for any given search.
The bottom line is that you need to get sites to link to you. If you can do it without exchanging links, that's the best and most effective way to increase your traffic. Consider free community forums where you're allowed to post links back to your site. Also consider writing content that doesn't read like a sales pitch that other sites will find useful enough to link to you for the sheer educational value of it. Next in line is to get link exchanges. Have a 'free resources' page on your site that contains links to other sites that agree to link back to you. But don't just trade links with anyone. Make sure the sites you exchange links with are reputable and relevant to your topic in one way or another. Otherwise it could do more harm than good. This method is free but tedious. Finally, if you can afford to do so, don't be afraid to pay to get listed on powerhouse sites that are highly trafficked and come up high in the search engines. But beware: many sites who offer paid advertising run their ads through a tracking script that nullifies the effect of the link. So make sure that the link is DIRECT and does not invoke a tracking and redirect script! Here's another free tip: make sure you are always consistent with how you reference your site. www.scoja.com and scoja.com are not the same thing when it comes to link building, even though they will both bring up the same site. Always get in the habit of doing one or the other so that you build up your link rankings and don't divide them.
In the end, you need to weigh the cost vs. reward. Small sites or sites without much traffic won't do much for you. And some of the more substantial sites will certainly charge to be listed. Usually with these small sites that haven't made a major effort into being a serious content provider, they simply don't have the metrics and tracking software for you to reliably see what you are getting in terms of traffic. The biggest problem is just doing the leg work to sort out what is and isn't worth doing. It can be incredibly time consuming and tedious and the results are not guaranteed.
You can easily sink a ton of time and effort into just researching sites to exchange links with before you get anywhere with them. But in the long run, these efforts may pay off if you search the net and find the right sites and deals. If you want to turn us loose on this, we can do it at our normal hourly rate, but truth be told, unless money isn't a big issue, you'd be better off hiring an assistant or even an intern to do this kind of work. Otherwise, for the amount of money you're going to spend on Scoja, it would be put to better use simply by buying more traffic via Pay Per Click or other types of marketing campaigns. But ultimately, if search engine traffic is important to you, then yes, you need to get other sites to link to you one way or another!
