What is the core of success of your link exchange directory? The desire of potential link partners to put link on your page. And how to encourage them? Show them that your any of your link exchange directory pages has very good chances for people turning back to it again and again.

Of course, there are many ways to make your directory pages a lovely place for link partners: quality of your site, SEO value, PR of pages, etc. But today I will focus on one simple feature that can turn your pages into a gluer for site visitors.

Make your link exchange directory pages socialized.

Perhaps, you saw the growing fashion for different social networks that help people to find quality info recommended by other people. These networks practise various approaches, but the core idea is about sharing quality resources. With one feature added to your directory pages you increase their potential for stable traffic. And what is better - your link partners will see that too.

Here is the tip - put a short sentence offering your site visitors to bookmark this page.

Yes, I know that bookmark feature already exists in all browsers and people can use it. But is it bad to ignite them to do that? Look at the example.

You have a page with some introductory text about this category of your directory; in this text you explain what type of sites you pick and show your site visitors that you really do good job to give them shortcut to quality resources in the niche. It is good in terms of psychology, because visitors are prepared to review the links. And it is good for SEO, because search engines don't see typical piles of links, but see relevant links, with unique info in the introductory passage. If you check search other articles about link exchange, you will see that adding unique content to link pages is becoming a must.

So, by the end of this passage put a sentence where you offer your users to bookmark your page, as this will save them time on searching for good resources in this niche, because you already have done this job. This sentence changes nothing about your links on the page, but the tricks of psychology have already started their job. And if your site visitors like the quality of resources that you picked for them - in their brain the idea of 'bookmark it, bookmark it' will be playing in loop. I personally wasted many good pages and had to start the search again and again. With this sentence being nicely visualized I would surely not come into this mistake and would have bookmarked the page from the beginning.

Advantages of encouraging visitors to bookmark link exchange pages.

1. Your visitors will get glued to these pages.

2. Your potential link partners will see that your pages are likely to attract visitors that comes back to these pages again.

Surely, your link partners will understand that the chances of their links to be clicked on the pages of this kind are much higher. So, their possible shifting behavior to put or not to put link on the page will be used into your favor.

3. Extra SEO benefits for bookmarked page.

If a page is bookmarked by many people, search engines will see it too. It is still quite disputable if bookmarking of a page is a very powerful factor in ranking a particular page. But definitely it benefits for the page. Because a bookmarked page is most likely to be a useful page in the niche. The more people bookmarked it, the more value it should have. As for search engines it is easy to check if the page is bookmarked or not, this factor will surely work as a booster for the page, and link directory in general.

My example with sentence was just an example; you are welcome to be creative about encouraging site visitors to bookmark your link exchange directory pages. But one thing is definite - your link exchange directory, site visitors and potential link partners will win from this feature integrated into your site.

Nickolay Bokhonok, CEO and owner of DesktopMoney LTD. Inventor of Internet marketing software and scripts. Successful Internet entrepreneur. Owner of the network of various money-making Internet projects.