A little earlier this year, I indicated to all my TNMD (Total Niche Market Domination) Students that there would be some additional content updates to the original PDF/Multimedia course released late 2005.

This will be one in a series of updates that will supplement the course.

If you have not taken the course, you can inquire more about the details so you can improve your current search engine optimization situation at your website.

As most brand new websites that need to get established, everyone starts out with a PageRank 0 and many people think they've got no chance at getting any link exchanges because of that. I get these remarks all the time… "Why would anyone want to exchange a link with my PR0 site?" NicheBOT, too, had to start out as a PageRank 0 with absolutely zero link partners at first. And it overcame that hurdle.

I think one of the most important things overlooked by most online business owners is giving value to the visitor, and in fact, enlightening other online business owners to want to reciprocate with a link exchange.

In fact, around the time that NicheBOT initiated it's own reciprocal linking campaign back in June 2004, there was rumor going around that reciprocal link exchanges were losing value and effectiveness. And now that I am here 2 years later, having acquired over 500+ link partners, and created some unstoppable traffic, I can tell you that the cycle of continual myths about link exchanges not working is as regular as me drinking my favorite coffee drink in the morning. And that's pretty regular. ;o)

So with this in mind, it's sometimes incredibly difficult for the boostrap entrepreneur to clearly make a decision and stick to it with a solid commitment, yet I decided to go against grain, and the rumors and all the excess hoop-lah about reciprocal linking and used NicheBOT as the test bed.

Other than looking at Pay-Per-Click options, there was no other better way to promote NicheBOT for a "fixed" price, other than doing article marketing, or press release stuff. I skipped all that quite frankly because I had no time to study the art of it. I need to put something into action fast…

Regular as clockwork, NicheBOT now passively attracts anywhere from 30-50 new link partners on a monthly basis, all from initial upfront work that now is paying off in endless returns. When I say passively, link partners now seek out NicheBOT rather than the other way around. Sure, it was some real work in the beginning, but with the search engine optimization achieved and website promotion effortlessly working, I can say it was well worth it.

Link Capture (the software that was used to secure the initial link partners) was worth every single penny, even though most complain that $499 for a piece of software is exorbatant.

True, it is costly, but for what it does is absolutely miraculous.

I always think of things in terms of cost versus price.

That piece of software first cost the business $499 and still continues to perform nearly 2 years later and the application itself is called into action most often. When you split the cost over 2+ years, or 24 months, that cost is now narrowed down to about $20 a month.

At first, when I first made the Link Capture purchase, I really was not sure things would pan out. But it was certainly a whole hell of a lot easier learning this software than the complex software called Zeus. With not much time to focus and get absorbed, I needed something that I could use easily and basically hit the ground running right after purchasing it.

I even saw this software app being touted in the most recently released course called The Affiliate Manager which I am in the process of reviewing right now. They refer to Link Capture as a means of recruiting Super Affiliates around the net. So it's gotta be good or Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom would not stake his high priced course's reputation on it.

THE REAL BENEFITS OF RECIPROCAL LINKING

Sure, the top keyword positions, the non-stop endless traffic that those organic search engine positions bring in and the subscriber base at NicheBOT building itself, it's all truly wonderful and rewarding.

Rather, it's the RESIDUAL search engine power you can build up with a recriprocal linking campaign and then use that power to build out more content, use anchor text like I show you in the TNMD course and begin ranking for highly competitive keywords you would never think of tackling.

Once you acquire a good amount of high quality links and you ultimately stabilize your Google PageRank — which I will tell you that in the first 6 months to one year, your Google PageRank will be all over the place.

I'm certain that most people get discouraged and think a Google PageRank drop or falling back down to a PageRank 0 means they did something wrong. I can tell you that NicheBOT's PageRank went from a PR0 to a PR7 back to a PR0 up to a PR5, back to a PR4 and then finally up to a PR6 where its been for quite sometime.

You can count on PageRank being irratic. Just don't pay it any mind. In fact, I know a man I respect a whole lot on this topic who basically says to not pay any attention to PageRank and concentrate on recruiting link partners. And I tend to agree with him because I've seen many online business owners go crazy because their fate rested on maintaining their PageRank.

This is just the expectation one should have when approaching reciprocal linking.

Now getting back to when you get established and finally get some good PageRank and are constantly increasing your link partners and are up somewhere around 100-200 link partners.

THE RISE TO #1

Now, if you have been paying attention to NicheBOT's resource page, which I don't anticipate too many people would, you would have noticed that we changed our keyword focus that is exchanged with other sites.

I talk about this in the TNMD course.

Before this change, NicheBOT focused on a totally different set of keywords that had a medium difficulty of obtaining top positions in the engines. NicheBOT is now aggressively pursuing more highly competitive terms that bring massive amounts of traffic.

Even before releasing the new link text to exchange with link partners, NicheBOT created a brand new page about where all the keyword data comes from so you can better use it in your website promotion.

Just as described in the TNMD course, a new web page was crafted on NicheBOT and the anchor text used in the link contained the one keyword phrase that brings in a very strong dose of traffic.

With the current search engine power acquired, just putting up this one page and having a link to it from any given page with the proper anchor text allowed this page to climb from out of nowhere to position 564 in about 3 weeks.

Not bad considering that there were no inbound links to this page.

Shortly thereafter, I crafted a new link text to trade with link partners which read as follows:

NicheBOT.com - "Finds the right keywords to use in your website promotion for better search engine optimization — then simultaneously track the search engine ranking for all of your keyword phrases.

After having exchanged link text with approximately 35+ partners, the one page above for "website promotion" now ranks somewhere around position 150 on Google and rising.

I, of course, use NicheBOT's Google keyword search engine ranking tool to monitor its right and fall. In fact, I've even thought of breaking up the "website promotion" page into multiple pages to make it more pallatable for the reader in a shorter scrolling fashion, and of course, which also allows for more potential landing pages for website visitors to land.

So once you establish your site with your own reciprocal linking program and things start to flow (meaning YOU are approached by other sites rather than the other way around), you can then tap into some real search engine power and simply put up new web pages, focus them in on a keyword used with the proper anchor text in the hyperlink and you've got the makings of a surefire way to building consistently rising traffic that cannot be reversed or stopped.

All it takes is a commitment to your own program and some consistency. Don't be shaken by some ups and downs and some potential PageRank loss. Going back down to zero could mean that you may come back even higher and stronger on the PR scale then before.

I believe it all has its way of working itself out.

But I think the wise dose of wisdom to take away is to not pay attention to that rating scale (PageRank) and you'll be better off.

I hope this helps at least one person to stay on track with their own goals of a reciprocal linking program and the rewards and benefits that can come therefrom.

Best,

Jim Morris, President/CEO

Full Throttle Enterprises, Inc.

NicheBOT - "Finds exactly what people search for."