Getting Started with Your Account

A. Add your web site's information

1. Click on "Add Site" and select the category that best describes your web site.
   
   
2. Add Title(s) for your site. This is a VERY important step. The title(s) that you input will be the actual anchor text that is linked to your site from other Link Exchange members. Search engines look at the keywords in this anchor text from web sites that are linking to you to determine what key words are relevant for your site in the search results. So use key words in your titles that you think people would type in a search engine to find your site. The most common mistake by webmasters is to simply list the name of your company or organization in the title. Use rich keywords.
   
   For Example: If the name of your company in Tim Miller Law Firm. DO NOT use Tim Miller Law Firm as your title. Examples of 5 great titles would be: Phoenix legal services, Phoenix divorce attorney, Affordable legal services in Arizona, DUI attorney in Phoenix and Top law firms in the Phoenix area. All of these titles are based off of search terms that someone might type in a search engine that is looking for your website/service.
   
   You may select up to 5 titles for each of your web sites. Our software will randomly display each of your titles in our directory. This provides you with an increased exposure for multiple keywords.
   
   
3. Enter your site address. Example http://www.yourdomain.com



4. Enter your Description(s). In addition to the keywords in your title, search engines also look for relevant text around your anchor text. As a result, it is important to give keyword rich descriptions. Type 3-4 good sentences that describe your web site and try to use keywords that someone might type in a search engine to find your web site. Similar to the multiple titles, multiple descriptions will be randomly displayed in our directory.
   
   
5. Select up to 30 categories for web sites that you would like to exchange links with.

B. Create a links page on your web site

1. This is the page that will display the categories you select in your control panel as well as all your link exchange partners from the Link Exchange directory. This page updates automatically and so you will not need to make any changes to it after it is set up.
   
   
2. Go to "My Sites" and click on "installation code".
   
   
3. First decide whether to use PHP, ASP or Perl. These are programming languages used on most web server. Most Linux servers offer PHP while most windows servers offer ASP or ASP.net. Contact your web hosting provider to find out which scripting language is available on your web site. Our service requires on of these programming languages due to the dynamic nature of the links page.
   
   
4. After you have decided which scripting language is supported by your web hosting company, select the appropriate language from the pulldown menu in item #1.
   
   
5. Now you must create your new Link Partners Page on your web site. Type the exact URL for this new web page in step #4. The page can be called anything you like such as links.php or links.asp (using the appropriate extension for the code you want to use).
   
   
6. Once you have created this page, click the "copy code" button in item #2 and paste this code into your new links page. If you have problems with this step, we are happy to help. Contact us and provide us with your ftp username and password and we will create you links page for you. Also note that you can edit variables in the codes such as: how many columns to display, how many link partners to display on each page, whether or not to open a new window when a link is clicked and whether or not to display the search function.
   
   
7. Now the final step is to create a link to the Link Partners Page on your homepage. The anchor text for the link should be "Links", "Link Directory" or "Link Partners". Please be aware that making this link invisible or using no anchor text is a violation of our Terms of Service and will result in your site being banned from the Link Exchange directory.

C. Validate your web site listing

1. Once you have created your "Links Partner Page" and pasted a link to this page on your homepage you are ready to activate your site.
   
   
2. Go to "My Sites" Click on the link labeled "Validate Links Page". Our software will validate your web site. It first checks your homepage. Then it checks to make sure that you have a link on your homepage to your "Link Partners Page". Next it validates that you have the correct code pasted on your "Link Partners Page". If everything is set correctly, your web site's status will change to "Active".
   
   
3. Now that your web site listing is set to "active" within our directory, you will be able to request link trades thousands of members. To insure that web sites continue to link to the Link Exchange directory pages, our software periodically checks to verify that the link is available on your home page. If for some reason the link is removed, you will be notified via email.
   
   

D. Request and edit link partners

1. Go to "My Sites" and click on "request/edit link partners".
   
   
2. By default, no other Link Exchange members will be linking to you. You will need to click on the "request/edit link partners" button and begin selecting the web sites you want to exchange links with. Until you begin this process, no other members will link to your web site.
   
   Select the categories that you want to exchange links with by selecting either "approve" or "deny". Next, click on each category that you approved and browse the web sites within that category. Mark the check boxes next to each web site that you would like to exchange links with. At the bottom of the page, click "request link trades" to submit the link requests. The link requests you make will be displayed in the "link requests" section of your control panel where they will wait for the link owners to either "approve" or "decline" the link trade request.
   
   We highly recommends that you select web sites and categories that are relevant to your web site since search engines like Google use link relevance as a way to determine search engine positioning.

E. Upgrade your Site Plan (Optional)

You may upgrade your web site to the Advanced plan for a small monthly fee. The cost is $20 per month or $200 per year. The upgraded features include: