The problem I have is most forums do not allow promoting in your signature. I have been banned from a few for this reason.
Then I guess you missed the finer points of the OP. It was not about forum sig links, although they would be nice. It was about networking with people in your niche and getting them to link to you naturally.
Link exchange isn't really a good strategy to build links. Networking with other bloggers is however a must.
Completely agree. I always go on building quality relationships. It's the fun part of doing an online business. That is having friends from all over the world. Quality relationships can be a good source of reciprocal help at all times. But of course, it must be genuine. A certain tip is to enter some training sessions of famous marketers. It needs some investment but you'll gain a good relationship with your trainer. He may even introduce you to his other marketer friends.
what is a good example of anchor text? is http://www.redBAMBINA.com good enough or when i do: <a href="http://www.redBAMBINA.com">Baby High Heels</a> is better?
eh? Anchor text is the text in the link like this <a href="www.link.com">ANCHOR TEXT</a> You can optimize this by putting your keyword. <a href="www.link.com">KEYWORD</a>
This is exactly what my site is trying to promote. Building relationships with webmasters and marketers.
I also follow this method. I am a member of many Forum's related to my sites, however, I never looked toward exchanging links with the forum's members, that is a good idea.
Dodger, that's interesting. I've always tried not to link outbound. Is there anywhere I can get more info about how this can be helpful? Nice tips btw, Gary. Thanks
@Soulful - There is documentation out there on outbound links, I am sure. But my feeling is just gut instinct. It came to me after putting my link in the footer of website I developed. The website sold 'questionable' products. When the site was new, I did a 'related site' search in Google. Guess what came up in the SERPS? Web dev sites, and not anything related to the site at all. Being that my link was the only outgoing link at the time, I came to the conclusion early on that Google was analyzing what you linked to. And it took that information and related it back toward the site. This is why we should never link to the so-called 'bad neighborhoods' or anything else that is not relative to the page that the link is on. That link adds (or detracts) to the content of the page.