One more thing and I'll stop hogging the forum

[JPTrick]

What is the proper etiquette for asking webmasters if I can link to their site and if they will link to mine?

Is there a polite way to do so?

Here's why I ask:

My site is very, very small and new.
I need people to link to me to grow traffic and (from what I hear) search ranking.

Asking a highly ranked site to link to me and in return I will link my site to theirs seems a little lopsided.

On the other hand, what would it hurt to link our sites? As long as the content isn't offensive, linking sites would have no effect, either positive or negative, on the big site, but it would do wonders for me.

I initially thought that if my site eventually became large enough and interesting enough, then people would eventually link to me.

Then I figured that if my site was large and interesting enough then I should not feel embarrassed by asking someone to link to me.

I should be proud of my site and even delude myself into thinking that I would be doing the BIG site a favor by "allowing " it to link to me. lol

[Blaine Moore]

I usually just write articles and link to the sites that I would want linking back to me. Once I have a bit of a foothold, anybody that hasn't been I might approach and ask about it. Usually, though, I don't worry about it and just link where I want links from and let them see me in their search traffic and link back on their own.

[Yaro]

My advice is to first create some great content to give others a reason to link to your site, then just start commenting on other sites or emailing the owners just to say hello and compliment them on their work.

What you need are one-way links. You only get these when there is a reason to link to your site. The problem when you first start out is that no one knows you exist yet, so even when you do produce something worth linking to, you still don't get links. It's at this point that you need to do some networking to spread the word of your existence but you do this without asking for anything in return - focus on giving at first (links, compliments) and it will come back to you in the form of links to your site.

Yaro