7 Web Tools That Can Make Getting Linking To Your Site Easier
By Bruce Hearder

The need for linking experienced on the web today gave birth to a new wave of software programs aimed directly to ease the webmaster’s job. Some consist only of a few line of code, while others are full-fledged software packages. The list shown below is not necessarily

The first stop on your linking quest should be at http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/ . There are many useful tools there, including the now famous link validator. Best of all absolutely every each one of the solutions presented is open source/ free software, so you can use them for free or even improve and customize them if you have the skills.

http://www.recip-links.com/ is another interesting stop on the web, as this site allows to checking of reciprocal links. The interface provided is fairly stable and it does the job, but the project is still in beta version. Also for now this software is free to use.

http://www.linkpopularity.com/ is another must visit site. The script there shows the number of links that go to your website. As this website does not require any registration it is quite easy to check on your competitors as well. Who knows maybe you will discover how they get their back links, so you can give it a try too.

http://www.copyscape.com/ is intended as a web tool to fight plagiarism, but it can be used for other purposes too, like finding who published your free article or your press release. You should individually go to each website that published your article to see if they gave you credit for it, as unfortunately many webmasters “forget” to add the “about the author” resource box.

http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/sitering/ is another approach to linking. Web rings consist of a large number of websites with similar content which all link to one another. Despite the fact that the search engines do not like them, a web ring is actually a great way to obtain quality traffic all by itself. The tool presented above comes free of charge, but does require registration.

http://www.freewebsubmission.com/ is another way of submitting your website to a large number of search engines and directories. However the website itself requires an email address to register. I highly recommend that you use an email different from your main one, as it is quite likely that it will get flooded with spam.

http://www.statcounter.com/ This is not a tool that helps with linking, but rather a tool that measure the effectiveness of the links. Finding out where you get your traffic from helps a lot in deciding with whom to exchange links. Best of all this software comes, but does require registration.