Vertical Portals and Related Sites

Once you have a good working site up and running it's worth investing some time digging around the web for sites that feature products or services that are related to yours. Companies and individuals who's trade may be dependent upon yours are are going make excellent online partners.

Vertical Portals

This is basically a portal with specific content related to one industry, for instance Travel or Homes & Gardens or Health... These sites often generate large quantities of very targeted traffic. Normally this traffic will consist mostly of loyal repeat visitors with a good knowledge of the subject. See our resources opposite for some examples of good vertical portals.

Vertical Portals are often magazine like in structure and usually consist of contributed articles, professional advice, and advertising. If you have a bit of time, a great way to obtain some free publicity for your website is to write a short article on a subject related to your industry. Make a list of portal sites within your market that may be interested in publishing an article and contact the webmaster of that site with a summary of your article content. In most cases you should get a positive response as webmasters are always looking for free content... us included... All being well they should publish your article including your name and a link to your website.

Also these sites often carry links pages or advertising banners. These can also be a great source for targeted traffic. For link exchanges, take some time to write a good template request for a link exchange. Explain that you have already listed them on your own site and how you would really appreciate them adding a link back. Be polite and complimentary about their site as well as making them aware of the benefits of yours.

Related Sites

Much of the above also is relevant to sites with similar content, although you may find it more difficult to get competitor sites to exchange links, it's worth having a go.

The benefits of building plenty of inbound links are enormous. As well as directly bringing in traffic, you are likely to see your site listings rise through the ranks on many of the major search engines who use link popularity to gauge a sites quality. It's well worth putting in the time, long term, and before long you will be seeing big improvements in traffic to your website.