Write Product Reviews and Testimonials

Even if you only sell a service, there are surely some products that are related to the service you offer. Review some of those products and offer them as testimonials to the manufacturer. If you don’t sell the product yourself, offer it to sites that do. Always provide a link to your site to be published with the review or testimonial you’re submitting. Be a voice in whatever industry your site is involved in. The louder and more intelligent your voice is, the more traffic you’ll see on your site. People buy from those they trust. If you’re new to writing product reviews and want to learn how before you try, visit http://www.possi.org/extended_attributes/2000/11/bitstream/view

Write an article a day

Keep expanding your site with quality content related to your niche. Write an article a day or add some new information for your visitors. Remember, the more pages you have, the more you can place targeted ads on, and the higher your search engine ranking will be too.

Write Articles

Writing articles can go hand in hand with your site’s newsletter or stand alone. The articles you write should correspond to your site content, offer insight, and be informative and interesting. You can submit these articles to e-zines or use a reputable article submission service. Make sure you place a link back to your site at the top or bottom of your article so you reap the benefits of your hard work. You can buy software like Article Announcer to submit your articles all over the net, or try free services like that offered at …
http://ezinearticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com

Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal links are easier to get placed, but you want to make sure where you’re placing them receives adequate traffic. When you request a reciprocal link, remember that you are going to place a link to them on your site as well. Again, find similar sites that do not compete with yours. Be sure that the sites you contact are ones you’d recommend to your customers. If a customer clicks that link on your site, they might hold you partially responsible if they have a bad experience, so it’s worth the time to research for the best sites.

When asking for a reciprocal link or a one-way link, it’s a good idea to have testimonials from your customers. Those establish you as a reputable site and business, and offer an extra incentive to do as you have asked.

One Way Links

One-way links are links to your site placed on other sites, without you having to return the favor by placing a link to their site on yours (reciprocal links). These are harder to get than reciprocal links. The more legitimate links you have back to your site, the higher you’re going to rank in the search engines and the more traffic you’re going to receive. You do not want to contact any site that could be in competition with yours at all. Instead, you want to target sites whose visitors would also be interested in what you offer. For example, you own a gift basket site. That’s all you do. You want to place one-way links on other sites. Don’t target sites that sell the products you put in your gift baskets or sites that sell different types of gift baskets than
you. Look for sites that sell other gift ideas, like online flower shops or singing telegram sites.
These sites in no way compete with yours, but you can offer their visitors other interesting options. Approach the site owner or Webmaster with that in mind. Tell them how placing a link to your site would benefit them and their customers. “Your customers may want to send a gift along with flowers, and would appreciate that you made their search easier for them.” You may even want to offer them a discount on your site or a free sample of your products.

When looking for sites, notice the ones that have a section for recommended sites. Those are usually one-way links, and those sites will probably be willing to add yours to the list if you can present them with a reason why they should recommend your site to their visitors.

Create Affiliate Programs

You can’t beat someone placing your ad on his or her site free, can you? But how do you do that? If you’re selling a product or service, you can do this by creating your own affiliate program. It works the same way as participating in someone else’s, but this time, you offer a commission to
sites whose visitors click through your ad, then buy something. To do this, you’re going to need to set up an organized system to track your click through rate and sales, set commission rates that you can afford and are willing to pay, and a system to pay your affiliates. It will take thought and a lot of time to get this rolling, but getting affiliates can be rather easy and you can be less picky than if you were buying ad space on their sites. You can find your affiliates by simply searching for sites that you think would be ideal. Send them an e-mail, introduce them to you and your site, instruct them on what you’re offering, and how they can sign up. Target higher ranked sites at first because those sites are more likely to bring you sales. In addition, those sites will be the first to be able to offer testimonials about your affiliate program. That will draw in more affiliates. Again, just make sure you can afford to pay what you say you will. The worst thing you can do is make your affiliates mad, or, worse, put yourself out of business.

Participate in Affiliate Programs

In an affiliate program, you agree to run an ad, usually a small banner ad, on your site that links back to the sponsor’s site. The ad will contain numbers or words in the link that will enable the sponsor’s site to recognize anyone that clicks through the ad as a visitor referred by your site.
If that visitor buys anything from that site once they click through, you receive a commission off that sale. Finding affiliate programs are easy to do. Look for sites that offer products or services that compliment yours, but don’t compete. Check their site for affiliate programs. Don’t sign
up for just any affiliate program, however. Again, you want to make sure the site already gets plenty of traffic, that they have a good reputation, and whatever product or service they’re offering goes with your site.
Google AdSense is very discriminating about having other ads appear on the same page as theirs. Affiliate ads which contain graphics and not text are usually okay, but be sure to read your Google TOS thoroughly so that you are not in violation.