The best way to find link partners is to build yourself a list of sites as you go a long through your emailing. This will keep you 100% on track and you won't miss a single site. The one thing I hate doing is realizing I've only been scratching the surface when just a little deeper there are veins of golden link exchangers, here's what I mean...

When I start linking for a new site, I'll do a search for the main keyword/keywords, starting with just one keyword. I then open up Microsoft word and save it as linkexchangers-sitename. I go back to Google and click on the first site in the listing for the main keyword. If my site is not in direct competition with this first listing I will email them for a link exchange, then go to Microsoft word and write down the domain! This is the most important part, that one domain is the key to unlimited link exchangers, this is the base of a tree that has literally thousands of branches and each leaf on the branch is a potential link exchange that will boost your site to the top of the search results.

Once you have gone down the list in Google and found about as many websites that are related to your site as you can, you've emailed them if they are not in direct competition with you, (write them down even if they are your competition and you did not email them, the key here is related sites!) your word file begins to look like this:

www.site1.com
www.site2.com
www.site3.com
www.site4.com

Only there should be about a full page or around 50 domains. The more you have on this first level, the more link exchanges there will be handed over to you later.

No we go back to www.site1.com and view their backward links, you can do this two ways, get the Google toolbar, (do a search in Google for "Google toolbar") and learn how to use it view backlinks, or type in "link:site1.com" without the quotes and change site1.com to whatever the site domain is. For deeper searching you can use yahoo.com type in linkdomain:www.site.com.

No we start the email process over again. Write down each domain that you see that is related to you. Email them for a link exchange if they are not in direct competition, (again write them down even if they are your competition and you didn't email them) your word file will begin to look like this:

www.site1.com
(these sites are site1.com's backlinks)
------www.site.com
------www.site.com
------www.site.com
------www.site.com
www.site2.com
www.site3.com
www.site4.com

The reason that this is so helpful is because you're going though a list of domains that are taking part in link exchanges, not just any site that you found in Google under a certain keyword but people who are interested in linking or they wouldn't be someone else's backlinks.

Once you’ve gone through that entire list, you should have quite a few link exchangers by now, but next you can then start the process even deeper, you page will start to look like this:

www.site1.com
-------www.site.com
------------www.site.com
------------www.site.com
------------www.site.com
------------www.site.com
---------www.site.com
---------www.site.com
---------www.site.com
www.site2.com
------www.site.com
------www.site.com
------www.site.com
www.site3.com
------www.site.com
------www.site.com
------www.site.com

I’ve found that the deeper you take this, the better the results. You’ll start to get conversions of 5 – 8% instead of 0.5% percent. Meaning 5 to 8 people will link with you out of 100 emails instead of almost none. I've seen it as high as 20 - 25% depending on the industry.

Another MAJOR benefit to this system is that you can stop for the day and when you come back you have a map to the exact point that you left off, without worrying about the seach results changing in Google and perhaps missing a few sites.

There is also an easy way to check to see if you have emailed the site already, build your list alphabetically or use ctrl f or the "find" tool to look for the domain.

Does anyone have anything to add to this?

That's a real good idea. I am going to start doing that from here on out. Thanks for the good read seokid.

Great tutorial...

I'm gonna start using this method.. I need to have some sort of overview as to sites I have already contacted... Sometimes looking for link exchanges can feel like "Groundhog Day"!!!

This was a good movie.

Yeah good exchange tracking technique buddy.

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Yes, I have done it before.
Combine it with this tools : http://www.webmasterbrain.com/prog/
I just found it last week..

Great post SEO Kid. Keep up the great work.

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Spifftacular Thanks everyone. I wonder if we can't hybridize this, does anyone have any thoughts or things to add to this?

Something I've found to get it started a bit faster is to take 10 of your major competitors and go from there. Start emailing their backlinks but more importantly is start emailing their links pages. Go for the highly relevant sites first. Then when you see that the site has a links page, copy and paste it into the word file at the top of the list to be done when you finish a level. I like using microsoft word as it has the ctrl f feature to search. That way I can see if a domain is in the list already or not. It feels slower to do this but once it's going the conversion is really great. I've been testing it for a full month now and it just gets better and better and you never feel like you're running out of places to look for site to email, you constantly have a list of sites that are relevant and the most likely to do a link exchange.

seokid: Check out Arelis try there free 30 day program. It does the same think only automates it for you, builds the category files, keeps tabs on them to make sure they still have there link up, emails them if they don't, and removes them from your partners page automatically if they don't put you back up.

Doing reciprocal link campaigns by hand is crazy in my opinion where there are so many good reciprocal link manager programs out there.

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Webmaster forums are great place to do find good link partners.

I like this idea, keeps things organized!

Thanks

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yeah software is good for managing link once you have them, or if you have enough traffic that there are people emailing you to ask for a link exchange. But if you're starting a new site or just trying to get more partners for what ever reason, the software isn't going to go get you new partners is it?

I totally agree that software for managing links is great but this is designed to build them initially. Arelis is great though.