Introduction
This article makes part of a series of 20 articles.  The subject of this series is the creation and promotion of a website as a cost-effective method to establish a profitable home based business on the Internet.
In my previous article, “Achieving financial freedom with Network Marketing on The Internet – Part 13 – Start building your link popularity - Search for the right partners”, I have presented to you the method to find the right websites to exchange links with.
In this article I will present you the method to find the right websites to exchange front-page links with.

Apart from the normal link exchange between two websites, there is also the “front page link exchange” (FPLE) possibility.

There are three issues to be taken in consideration before trying to implement this kind of link exchange:

1. The correspondence of the two web pages involved in a FPLE, regarding their Pagerank (PR).

If your home page has a PR of 4 and your request a FPLE from a website that has a home page with a PR of 6, probably you won’t receive even an answer (unless you have a good position in the listings of the Search Engines for your keyword and receive much traffic. In this case you must make this comment in your FPLE letter and there are chances that the other webmaster will accept your request).
For this reason first your home page must reach the PR of 5 (using the regular link exchange procedure) and start by requesting FPLE from websites that have a PR of 5 and few outgoing links in their home page.

It is a good technique also to create some web pages in your website with similar keywords to your home page. If you have a home page with a PR of 5 or 6 and you receive a FPLE request from a website that has a home page with PR of 4, you can negotiate with that webmaster the possibility to put his link in one of your other pages with PR of 4 until his web page ranks 5 or better. Then you will transfer the link to your home page. Of course, in exchange he will place a link to your home page in his home page.

2. The correspondence of the two web pages involved in a FPLE, regarding the number of their outgoing links.
Every web page has a strength that comes from the incoming links (the pages that link to this page). And the strength of this page is equally divided to each outgoing link (each link from this web page to another one). If your web page has a PR of 5 and links to 10 pages, then each one of these pages takes from your home page 1/10 of its strength. If the same web page has 50 outgoing links, then each one of them receives the 1/50 of your page’s strength. As you can understand, the less the links a home page has, the better, if you intent to exchange links with this page.

If your page has a PR of 5 and 80 outgoing links and you request an FPLE from a website with a home page of 6 as PR and 40 outgoing links, then the trade is not exactly fair. You get 1/40 of a 6 and give 1/80 of a 5. This is not the whole truth, but it is an important aspect in a FPLE. There are pages that have a PR of 4, yet they are very good placed in the listings of a certain keyword and receive many visitors. A good link from such a page can bring you a good portion of its visitors. In that case, if you decide to exchange front page links with that webmaster, you will request that your link is positioned as closed to the top of this page as possible. Be careful with front page link exchange not to end with one hundred links in your home page. This may become dangerous. You’re risking to get banned from the Search Engines or affect the importance of your page, since the links will out weight the content of the page.

3. The total number of outgoing links in your home page

As I mentioned in the end op the previous paragraph, the total number of outgoing links in your home page is a parameter to take in serious consideration. You have to include in your home page a lot of text, other wise a big number of outgoing links may cause your home page to be banned from the listings of search engines or get a lower position in the listings. Always remember that there are human beings that read your home page and it has to be nice and readable. A page full of links and with little and outdated content will cause your visitor to leave and your main target will not be achieved.

If you want to build good relations with other good websites and webmasters, treat them with decency. It will pay you back in time. They will support you when you will need them.

Here is an example of requesting a front-page link exchange:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Greetings

My name is Tasos Vasilopoulos from http://www.netincome.gr

I recently visited your site and wondered whether you might be interested in becoming a link partner with me by exchanging links from our home pages.

I have already placed a link towards your website in the home page of my websites, under the "recommended sites" section.

Please check if the link is properly set up at:

http:// www.netincome.gr

The linking information of my website is:

Description: "Build a profitable business completely on the Internet from the comfort of your own home office - Earn income globally, 24 hours a day!"

I will be waiting for your response. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Tasos Vasilopoulos

--------------------------------

Next article in the series “Achieving financial freedom with Network Marketing on The Internet” :
Part 15 – Hiring links from other pages – Pay to become important.

--------------------------------

About the author:
Tasos Vasilopoulos is a successful Network Marketer on the Internet as Group Leader of SFI Marketing Group. His main method to promote his home business on the Internet is websites properly optimized to obtain a good rank in the listings of the major Search Engines.
Get his ebook with an in depth analysis of all the steps of his method and find more resources on proper domain registration, effective website design and search engines optimization in his website at http://www.free-work-at-home-job.com. 
You are free to use this article as long as you do not make any changes in its content, you keep all the links in it active and you include the information above about the author as it is.