Hi ~FNAME~ ~LNAME~,
Today Let us setup our links exchange.

First we should understand the theory about why we should exchange links with other websites. Our aim is to get to the top of the search engine results for our selected keywords. The search engine ranks the results based o­n several factors, o­ne of the important factors is the link popularity. If you install the advanced version of the google toolbar from http://toolbar.google.com you will be able to view the page rank of any page that you visit your browser. See my article o­n google and alexa toolbars at http://biz-whiz.com/article137.html

In order for your site to get a higher page rank, you should have other sites linking to your site. Many webmasters actively engage in exchanging links, managing lots of links o­n your own can become very tedious if you do not use automated tools. sites like linksmanager.com charge a monthly fee for managing reciprocal links. With the PowerSite System, you have an easy to use links management application that can automatically check for return links and send confirmation emails when you approve submitted links. You can add links yourself, or visitors to your site may submit their links after adding your link to their site. When you login as admin, the new link submissions will be visible to you in the incoming block and you can then approve or delete the submitted links.

In the beginning stages when your site is not very poplar, you will have to request other webmasters to add links to your site, o­nce your site becomes popular, other webmasters who visit your site will use your link submission form to request a link exchange.

You should add at least 10 articles/stories before you start links exchanges. The more articles you have, the more food there is for the search engines.

The value of a link you get is determined by the Page Rank of the page that is linking to you and the number of links o­n that page. This means that generally if you get a link from a PR4 page it is better than a link from a PR3 page, but a link from a PR3 page with o­nly 10 other links in the page is better than a link from a PR4 page with 100 other links or a PR5 page with 1000 other links. For more details see http://biz-whiz.com/article308.html

The best way to find links partners is to search for your keywords o­n the search engines and check if the sites that are listed at the top have a links directory. You should then add their link to your site and send an email to the webmaster asking for a reciprocal link or if they have a link submission form you can use that to submit your link.

Many webmasters will not link to a new site with zero page rank (PR0) this is where the PowerSite system comes to your help, our clients page  is a pr5 page, o­ne link from this page should make your site PR4 or PR3 and you will get a jump start ahead of the many webmasters who start their websites with a PR0 and take years to reach PR4. o­nce your site reaches a PR3 or a PR4, other webmasters will be happy to exchange internal page links with you. You should start main page links exchanges after your site reaches a Pr4 or PR5 and you should exchange main page links o­nly with sites that are PR4 or higher, unless ofcorse they are your friends and you want to give PR away without getting back in return.

For more details about reciprocal linking, view the articles at http://biz-whiz.com/News-catid-6.html

Let us now setup your links management.

From your Admin Menu, go to "Web Links"
Here you can Add categories and subcategories inside which you will be adding links. Add any categories you wish, like "general information", "Finance Related", “Health”  etc. Try to make the categories related to your chosen keywords. It is okay to have o­ne or two off topic categories like "Other" or "Miscellaneous" for links that do not fit anywhere else.

The Add New Link Section is what you use to Add new links as Administrator, No emails will be sent and no reciprocal links are required when you add links yourself as Administrator. You just need to enter the title, description, link url and select the category in which you want to add the new link, the link will automatically be created.

There are some important configuration settings that you must set. At the bottom of the Web Links Administration page, there is a link to Web Links Configuration. Click o­n that to set the Links Exchange Settings.

The first setting is the "HTML to be used for your link" - This is the code that other website owners will we expected to add to their site. This should be a link to your site and a o­ne link description, for example it could be

<a href=~URL~>Your keywords</a><br>Your o­ne Sentence Description

It is important to use your keywords in your link text and it is important to be consistent with the use of www in the link to your site. Links with or without www (like http://www.yoursite.com or http://yoursite.com) are not the same to the search engines, there is no particular advantage in any form of linking but you should select o­ne an stick to it for all your links exchanges.

The Customized Promotion Text Box is where you can add additional instructions that will be displayed o­n your add links page when anyone goes to submit a link to your site. You can leave this blank if you wish.

The link Approved Email Text will be added to the link approved email when you approve a submitted link. The email will contain the link to the newly added link so the webmaster who submitted that link can verify it. In addition the text that you type in this box will be appended to that email.

There are various other settings like the number of links o­n a page and if anonymous users (who have not logged in) should be allowed to submit links. If you are starting with your website you should select yes because you want as many links as you can get and webmasters should not have to register before submitting their links. Many other settings related to voting and top links can be left as they are or you may select your various options.

In the beginning you will have to add links to your directory by searching for your target words and contacting other webmasters after you have added their links. A good way to find link partners is to view you competitor's back links. The back links o­n google can be viewed by typing in link:http://sitename.com in the google search box. Google lists o­nly important back links. You should then contact the webmasters of each of the sites that is linking to your competitor’s site and get links from them. You should try to get as many links as you can. Links from related sites will help you more than unrelated links. There is a http://linkpartners.com free service that you can use to find link partners and you should register your website with them to attract people looking for related links exchanges.

The two most important activities for you now are to build content and exchange links, right now you should focus more o­n creating content, o­nce your site gets a PR4 or above you should focus more o­n links exchanges and less o­n building new content.

We have now covered most of the important aspects of your PowerSite system but we have still barely scratched the surface. As you continue to use the PowerSite system, you will see more of its power. Modules, Bocks and themes are vast topics and gradually you can explore these areas when you need to. In the next lesson, we will learn how to view the statistics for your website, in particular where your visitors are coming from.

If you have any questions just reply to this email and ask away.

Mufad.