It will be very easy to get overwhelmed by all the information you will be looking at so you need a good way to keep track of it. Use a word processor, a Table form, or a spreadsheet to help you keep track of all this information.

Here's the main information you'll want to collect:

Home Page URL (Web address).
Name of the site owner or Webmaster. If you don't see it listed, check out their "Contact Us" page.
E-mail address of the person you will be contacting
PageRank of their Home Page. This isn't required information but it will come in handy if you don't get a response from them and you need to decide later if it is worth your time and effort to continue trying to make contact.
The Date you contact them. This helps you keep track of your progress.
You'll also want to have a place to record a follow-up date in case you decide to contact them a second time.

I would not bother contacting anyone a third time. If you haven't received a response after a second contact, they probably aren't interested in trading links with you and you'll be wasting your time.

Here's a tool you can use to find out information on a Website.
It's called: Whois Source. http://www.whois.sc/
If you go to this site and type in the URL of a Website you are interested in (for example: "www.citysales.com") you can find out who the site is registered to and the contact information.

6. Finally, Contact the Sites

Contact potential Link partners by Sending them an email. The easiest and best way to contact each site is to send them an email. But don't send them a note that looks generic because they will likely consider it as spam and just delete it without reading it.

You can start with a generic form letter that you use as a template for everyone, but try to write the template so it sounds like it came from a "human being" and is not spam created by a computer. Then simply insert the information you collected during your search for Link Partners.

Here's the main information you should include in your note:

Introduce yourself and state that you have a Website. This way they know you are someone special and not just any "Joe" or "Sally" who is sending them the email.
State that you'd like to trade links with them.
If their site has content similar to yours, then note this fact in the letter so they will know that trading links with you will be beneficial to their site. Say something like you have similar products, services or information so visitors will be interested in both sites.
Tell them the URL of the page on your site where you have placed a link pointing to their site. You don't have to do this first, but you will get a better response to your note if you have already set up a link to them, so they can check it out. If you don't get a response back from them within a reasonable amount of time (30 days) then you'll want to remove this link from your site.

Many websites have an "Add a Link" page and you can get the information from this page showing you how they would like their link on your page to look. You should be able to do a simple cut and paste of this information to your page to set up the link.

Many time you can use a website's "Add a Link" page to submit your request to them for a link exchange. They will have all of the required information spelled out so you can just follow their instructions, submit your request, and then wait for their response. This would save you the time of writing a separate email to them.
Specify the URL and the anchor text of the link you want them to put on their site, pointing back to your site.

The anchor text is the text that a user sees on the page, and that's what they click on. The reason you want to be so specific is that a text link on another Web page that points to your page will help with your search engine ranking if the "anchor text" contains your keywords. This is a very important part of Off-Page Optimization.

Manual Link Building Takes A Lot Of Time

This process of Link Building takes time and can be frustrating, especially if negative responses or a lack of responses will bother you.

Don't try to accomplish too much at once.
The whole process will take months if you want to acquire a lot of links.
Pace Yourself, but be consistent.
Work on it a little bit each day, but keep at it.

Keep the Ball Rolling by doing your Follow-Up. Remember, you are dealing with people and not just computers. People can forget or get busy with other things, so you might not get a response in a day or two. Some people maintain multiple websites and are extremely busy.

If you don't get a response within a couple of weeks, then you'll need to determine if you want to send a follow-up request. Look at their PR and see if it's worth your time. Don't spend a lot of time trying to get a link from a site with a PR of 0 or 1. There are millions of web sites out there and there are plenty of people who will be willing to trade links with you.
You Must Use your time wisely.

Once a site has set up a link pointing back to your site, they should send you a note letting you know that it has been done.

The whole process of building links takes a bunch of time and is tedious and boring work.

There is a better way.
Check out the Web Master Tools for Great Tools that Help Automate the Link Building process and will save you a bunch of time.

Click the Tutorial Next button to learn how the Link Building Process can be made much easier by using Tools that automate the process

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