Linking to related business?

[marker-311528]

If your working with a local business, is it a good idea to reach out to similar businesses in other states and ask for a link?

Example: I own a paint shop in Minnesota, and I reach out to a paint shop in California to see if we want to link to each others site to help our SEO.  Because we aren’t in competition with each other wouldn’t this help us both?

[fassa]

Yes it definitely will.  Even creating a network could get you some Busyness to Busyness relations and other benefits.

[EGOL]

Create something even more valuable....  A huge list of painting tips.

You write fifty tips for paint prep, application and clean up.

Find fifty other paint guys who will do the same.

Then trade tips and publish a huge list of tips on your site, each attributing back to the contributor.

Everybody gets a great page of unique content and more.

[marker-311528]

Thats a good idea! How ever you didn't really answer my question :).

[EGOL]

Dude... you got the best idea that I have ever posted on this forum.  So what if it didn't answer your question? 

[marker-311528]

Haha, not gonna lie, im totally gonna use that...

[KeriMorgret]

Can you share how this has worked out for you? I think EGOL has the better idea here -- make something that's valuable for the users and gives a natural reason to link. The straight reciprocal link proposed is really only for the search engine and gives no value to the user, and the engines generally don't encourage that type of thing.

[marker-311528]

I will let you know how this works out!

[marker-311528]

EGOL,

I have a question for you. Would it be a bad idea to create the list of tips and have each company put the list on their web site. Im thinking in terms of duplicate contact?

[EGOL]

The reason that I suggested 50 tips per paint guy was to give every participate a unique set of tips that would survive any duplicate content problems.

Any real paint guy should be able to come up easily with 50 tips.