Introduction
Active Link Exchange is the most effective way to build a free and highly profitable link exchange network to increase your web popularity. Obtaining high quality inbound links is the best and most important method to quickly and easily increase your page rank, be known in your field, target the right customers and increase your sales ratio. More than 33% of the entire traffic is the result of inbound links and more than 80% of sales are the result of targeted, high quality inbound links. It is not a secret that top ranked web sites are using this strategy. Active Link Exchange has all the features needed to start and maintain a winning linking strategy for your web site. Below you will find a sample session that will help you get started with the software.

Installation
Basically you just download the product and then install by running or double clicking on the downloaded executable file.
If you get the message "Installation Corrupt" or a similar message when running the installation file, then your download did not complete or got aborted prematurely. Go back to the download page and download the file again. It should be exactly the same size as indicated when the download finishes.
Existing customers that need to re-install the product, simply download the trial version, install it, then re-enter your registration key or unlock code if needed.
To run the program after installing go to the Windows Start Menu and Programs, then select Active Link Exchange.

Registration
Myrasoft has made registering Active Link Exchange a quick and easy process. Once you have placed your order, our Customer Service Team will send the Registration Key via email. This email will also contain simple instructions on how to get your new software registered properly.  You can unlock the software with these simple steps:

1. Run the software. From the main menu click on "Help" and then on "Registration".



2. Enter your registration key exactly as it was sent to you by email from our Customer Service Team, be sure you are connected to the internet and hit 'OK'. If you are using a proxy to connect to the internet you can configure it by marking the Use Proxy Server box and entering the proxy fields exactly as they are configured in your browser internet connections options.



That's it...you're registered!

Update the software
Be sure you are using the most current version of the software. To update to the latest version of the software click on "Settings" and then on "Update".
 


Active Link Exchange will check for any version updates and auto-update itself to the most recent version. With its free automatic updates you are always sure to have the latest version available.

Configure the software
1. Select "Settings" on the main menu. Then click on "Mail options". 



Enter the email address account that you want to use to send link exchange requests. You need to enter your mail Smtp server (such as mail.yourdomain.com), your email address account (such as linkexchange@yourdomain.com) and your password. This is exactly the same configuration that you should have configured in your email client software such as Outlook or Eudora.



2. Select "Settings" on the main menu and click on "FTP Uploader Options".
Here you will enter the ftp settings used to upload your link exchange web page to your server. Enter your ftp host (such as ftp.yourdomain.com), your ftp account and password, then click on "Save as default settings". This is exactly the same configuration used by any other ftp program to upload web pages to your server.



Alternatively you can also use your current favorite ftp program. To do that select "Settings" on the main menu and click on "General Settings". Under "General Settings" click select "External FTP client" and browse through your Program Files folder until you find the ftp program you use.



You have now configured the basic setup for Active Link Exchange. There are other advanced settings available that you can check out from the Settings help section.

Create a new link exchange project
The first step of your link exchange campaign is to create a new project. You will normally create a project for each web site you own or service. Active Link Exchange allows you to create an unlimited number of projects. When you run Active Link Exchange it will ask you to create a new project or load an existing one.



Alternatively you can also create a new project by clicking on "File/New" from the main menu.


Enter the data for your new project including a Project name, the home Web Site for this project, the Name that will be used in your emails to other webmasters, your Company name (optional), the Email Address to be used in your emails and the Url where you will upload the page containing links to your partner network sites.



Research and find new partners for your link exchange project
The next step is to research the right link exchange partners for your web site. Your ultimate objective is to obtain targeted, high quality inbound links from the most popular and better ranked web sites on your desired sector or area of interest. To start Active Link Exchange partner research Wizard, from the main menu, click on "Project/Find New Partners".



There are three ways to look for partners:
A) Finding web sites that are actively linking to your competitors (you want those web sites to link to your site as well). This is a powerful tool that let's you find out if your competitors are involved in a link exchange strategy. If one of your competitors is quite successful on the internet a good bet is that they have key partnerships and high quality inbound links. It's a good idea to replicate his network exchanges to drive a portion of your competitors traffic to your website right away!

B) Find web sites by keywords related to your site on the search engines (this is a nice option to use when starting out your link exchange, you are looking for top ranked web sites in your sector or area of expertise).

C) Find web sites that are already linking to you (you may want to include these friendly sites on your link exchange page and let them know that you appreciate their link).

Of course you can use all three options and incorporate the results in your project. Here we are using option B, that is finding partner web sites by your selected keywords.



If for example your are interested to partner with web sites about astronomy books enter the keyword "astronomy books" and select the countries and search engines where you would like to search for link partners. If you want to search all countries and search engines click on "Select All". 



The partner research Wizard will then prompt you for the maximum number of links that you want to retrieve from each search engine. The default setting is 20 and will search only for the best 20 links on any given search engine. Additionally you can add search filters by clicking on the "Add filter" button. You can add filters such as ignoring web sites which contain certain words, ignoring certain domain names, urls or even web pages which contain a certain email address. If you plan to catalog link partners by category the partner wizard is also able to assign all links found to your selected category (by default the General category). Click on the Next button.



Active Link Exchange will return the best partners and top rated sites that relate to your keyword theme. You can browse and select the returned sites individually by search engine or just select them all by clicking on the "Select All" button. Then click on the "Extract" button to incorporate the selected web sites into your list of desired link partners. When the wizard is done extracting each link data click on "Finish".



Managing your link exchange list
The new web sites found are now displayed in your list of link exchange partners with all their data including their url, web title, contact email address and web rank (web position on the search engine). Click on File/Save to save the new data just incorporated into your project. You can then visualize all links on your list by several concepts such as listing only the links you have found today, the links found by keywords or the ones found when looking on your competitors sites and so on.



You can preview, edit links or remove links from your link exchange list. To preview a link just click on the desired link from your list, then click on the Preview tab and the web page will be displayed in Active Link Exchange's preview panel. Alternatively you can also launch the web page in your current internet browser by clicking on "View/View link in browser" from the main menu.



To edit a link just click on it, then click on the Edit Link tab. You can modify the url, the home page, the page containing the inbound link to your site, the name of the web site, enter any notes for this particular partner and even get a logo for your link exchange partner listing by clicking on the get logo button.



Other options include editing the email address that Active Link Exchange extracted from the web site by double clicking on the email address field for the desired listing, or editing the web rank, link back or status of the web site in a similar manner. You can also remove web sites from your list with which you are no longer interested to partner with by clicking on the Remove Link button. Alternatively it is possible to manually add any potential partner web site you become aware of by clicking on the Add Link button and entering the web site data.



Once you have reviewed your link exchange list and are satisfied with it you can run the research partners Wizard again by clicking on the "Find New Partners" button and let's say look for the top rated web sites that link to your competitors or start researching new keywords. As soon as you are happy with your initial list of potential partners you can proceed to send them a cooperation offer email to start building your link exchange network.

Link exchange mailing campaign
If you want to email all the potential partners in the list you just built using the research partners Wizard, first filter the list by selecting "Last Added Links" on the Status filter drop down box, this way only the links you added recently will be displayed, then right click on any link and click on "Select All". When the desired links are highlighted click on the "Send Email" tab. From the "Send Email" screen select any of the built in Email Templates from the drop down menu such as the "Initial offer 1" template or create your own email template by selecting "New Template".



Then click on the "Add to Queue" button. The number of emails to be sent is displayed at the "In Queue" field. To check that everything is ok before sending just click on the "Preview Queue" button which will show you the exact content of the emails that will be sent.



Alternatively you can also send individual emails by just selecting one link from the list or by selecting any number of links of your choosing. For example to send to all the web sites that still don't link to your site you will first order the list by clicking on the "Link Back" column icon and selecting all the links that contain "No" in that field. Then you will proceed as above clicking on the "Send Email" tab, selecting any of the email templates, and then clicking on the "Add to Queue" button.
Note that when no email address has been extracted by the research wizard from a web page the email will be sent by default to office@website.com (where website.com is the domain of the site and office@ is set by you from Active Link Exchange's configuration settings screen. Click on "Settings/General options" if you wish to change the default email address to something different such as for example webmaster@website.com).



The sender email address will be the one you have set up as the default in your Project Options when creating the project. If you want to change this email address, from the program main menu click on "Project/Project Options" and enter a different email address.
When you are ready to start the mailing click on the "Send now" button. Active Link Exchange will start the mailing process.



As soon as your email has been sent, Active Link Exchange will mark the status of those links as "Waiting for answer to link request mail". You can see this under the Status column on the link list. Click on File/Save to save the current status of links into the current project.

Getting responses and building your links page

When you start receiving confirmation responses and webmasters start linking back to your site, you can build and manage your own reciprocal links web page with Active Link Exchange automatic page generator. As a first step as soon as you receive a positive response from a partner you will edit that site data by selecting it from the link list and then clicking on the Edit Link tab. You will enter the exact page that contains the link back to your site on the "Page Containing Link" field. Additionally you can enter the partner name or partner company as well as any notes that you wish for this particular site.



If you plan to include a logo for their listing on your own links page you can get it by clicking on the "Get" button next to the "Icon or Logo" field and selecting it from any of the identified images that Active Link Exchange logo extractor has found in their site.



Finally you will change their link back status to "Yes" and their Status to "Website links back" by double clicking on the corresponding fields for this link. You can check whether your partner continues to link back to you at anytime by selecting the link and clicking on the Check Link Back button.



Now, it is time to generate your reciprocal links page and include the recently confirmed link back into your list of links. Click on "Project/Generate partner link page" from the main menu.



The link exchange web page generator wizard will open. Since this is the first time you generate a link exchange web page you should select "New" on the page field. If you were adding a new link back to an existing page you will select "Open" to open your previously created web page already containing links. If you have assigned different categories to links you may want to create a link exchange directory structured by categories by selecting "Catalog Type" on the page type field or you may also create a simple page containing all links without any category division by selecting "Single Page". Here we will create a simple page which contains all links.
Finally there are four options for the page layout:
The first option will create a list containing the logo and the description of the link to its right.
The second option will display the logo and the description of the site below it.
The third option will contain the url and the description of the site.
The fourth option contains the logo, the url and the description of the site.

Here we will use option 1 and include just the logo and a description of the site to its right.      



On the next screen you just select the links that you want to add to your web page from the list of links on the left and then click on the right arrow icon to move them to the list of links to be incorporated in your web page, located on the right. Then click on the "Add" button. The html code is automatically generated and displayed. When you have added all the desired links click on the "Save" button and give a name to your links page such as links.htm. Your reciprocal links page has now been generated and saved in your Active Link Exchange project folder.



To preview how your web page will look like click on the "Preview" button.



When you get additional link back confirmations you can easily incorporate new listings into your existing web page in a similar way. The next step is to upload the links web page to your server. You can use your existing ftp program or Active Link Exchange ftp manager. To upload your page using Active Link Exchange ftp manager just click on the Upload button located in the Code Generation screen above or click on the FTP tab from Active Link Exchange main screen. As soon as you are connected to your server you can select the folder where to upload your links page on the left panel and then click on the "Generate" or "Upload" buttons to upload your web page.



To upload your page using your favorite ftp program just run your program or click the "Run Ftp" button from the Code Generation screen, go to the directory where you saved your links page (called links.htm on this example) and upload it to the desired location in your server. You can configure Active Link Exchange to use any external ftp program by clicking on "Settings/General Options/External Ftp Client" from the main menu and configuring the location of your favorite ftp program such as WSFTP on this example. This will activate the "Run Ftp" button in the Code Generation screen.



Once you have uploaded your updated links web page you may want to check if your partner links are correct at anytime by clicking on "Project/Check partner links on your page". This identifies any broken links and updates the "I link to my partner" column to "Yes" for all the new added links.



The next step is to send a confirmation email to the partner notifying him that you have successfully added their link. Select the website from the links list and then click on the "Send Email" tab. Select any of the built-in email templates such as "We have added your link 2" from the Email Templates drop down menu and click on the "Add to Queue" button.



Click on the "Preview Queue" button to preview the contents of your email.



If everything is ok click on the "Send Now" button. That's it, your new link exchange partner has now been notified about their new listing at your site.

As your link exchange network grows you can check out your link exchange project statistics to track progress. A complete summary of your link exchange project is displayed including the total sites in the project, the number of web sites linking back to your site, sites for which you are waiting for an email response, sites which are pending for a new email campaign, the urls listed on your link exchange web page and much more information regarding your project that will help you manage and take decisions on your link exchange strategies.



From the project statistics screen you can save your link exchange project summary into an html file by clicking on the Save to file" button. This is useful to record the status of your network as your campaign advances or also, if you are offering services, to record or send link exchange or link popularity reports to your clients.

You can start looking for new link exchange partners at any time by using a different keyword or concept or try to enroll your competitor's top partners from the partners research wizard. Your link exchange network will quickly begin to generate highly qualified traffic to your site coming directly from your top partners. At the same time your web popularity and search engine ranking will automatically increase as soon as the major search engines robots re-visit your site and your partner's web sites. A link campaign strategy is a must in today's competitive world and Active Link Exchange includes all the tools you need to easily implement successful link exchange campaigns for your web site.

We hope you have find this sample Active Link Exchange session useful. Additional help on how to use all software features is available by clicking on the "Help" button from within any particular program window or by just clicking here to see detailed help for each program screen. To go to the frequent asked questions section just click on the Next button below.