One important thing YOU can do to improve your rankings in search engines is to increase the number of websites linking to your own site.

One common link-building tip calls for trading links with companies offering information or products compatible or synergistic to your own. These should not be websites directly competitive with your own, but instead be complimentary. Sounds simple enough, right? But, the question then arises: "Where do I start?"

For the well informed, there's a gold mine of strategic linking and partnering opportunities out there. You just have to know where to look. There are multiple ways you can locate companies who are well suited to send you traffic while at the same time improving your link popularity and rankings:

1. Link Check Your Competitors
   Take advantage of free services like www.linkpopularity.com to find all the websites that link to your competitors. Click the Details link to view the list. If your product or service is stronger than your competitor, then consider visiting some of these sites and approaching them in regard to linking to you as well, or as a replacement to your competitor depending on the situation. These websites have already demonstrated an interest in linking to websites similar to your own, so many will be ideal candidates.

2. Search Catalogs for Complimentary Sites
   Major category-based engines like Yahoo!, Looksmart, and Open Directory divide their content into topics. You can often find a neatly organized list of websites that are complimentary to your own by browsing these categories. Visit the websites you find and contact them in regard to adding a link to your site, or to specific content you offer.

3. Link Check Complimentary Sites
   If you have strong competitors, or simply prefer to not go head to head with your competitors, link check complimentary sites! A major site that is complimentary, but not competitive to your own may offer an array of links that are also complimentary. Find websites that cater to the same audience you do, but do not sell the exact same things.
   
   Using these methods, it won't take long before you have a huge list of websites that may be willing to link to you.
   
   Many engines such as Google calculate link reputation for all the websites that link to you. Therefore, linking websites having a greater popularity or link reputation will affect your own link reputation to a much greater degree. Once you have a decent link reputation, you'll find it to be much easier to obtain top rankings when you go to optimize your content.

When requesting a link trade, keep in mind these important tips:

• Be sure you have developed genuine content on your website of interest to the trading partner. Take the time to point out specific articles that would be of interest to THEIR visitors. Tell them they can host the article on their website, if they'll simply credit you as the source and add a link to your site. Do all the work for them. Email them the page with a discrete credit at the bottom. Be sure the link to your website contains your important keywords to bolster your rankings on those keywords.

• Explain the advantages to the potential link partner and the advantages your website has to their visitors. They must clearly understand how linking to you benefits them.

• If you plan to link back to them as an enticement, consider telling them where the link will be placed, or set the link up in advance with the stipulation that you'll be glad to leave it there if they'll be kind enough to link back to you.

• Take the time to look over their website and then suggest where a link to you might be appropriate. Consider supplying example text to make this easy for them. Look for pages with relatively few outgoing links. Your link reputation, at least on Google, will be reduced in relation to the number of other links on the referring page.

• Most importantly, personalize your emails! You must distinguish yourself from all the spam most website owners are swamped with daily. If the link is particularly important to you, call them personally on the phone, write them a letter, or send a fax to show them you're serious.

Anytime you do achieve a link to your website, consider submitting the domain or the page the link resides on to ensure that the search engine sees it and updates your link popularity score. If the page with your link is never indexed, then your link popularity score will never improve. Of course, links also benefit you through increased traffic, so link popularity and improved rankings are not the only benefits you'll receive.