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Get More Links with This Often Overlooked Page

February 1, 2008

Get More Links with This Often Overlooked Page What do most web site operators and bloggers want? Ok, besides money and lots of lovin'! Yes, they want LINKS. Inbound Links. Lots of links. We LOVE Links.

What's one of the most overlooked pages you can add to your site? That's right, instructions or suggestions on how to link to your site. Sound too simple? Don't assume everyone knows how to do these things, the fact is they don't.

Why would you want to have a "How to Link to Me" page anyway? Surely if someone wants to link to you they'll just do it, right? Maybe. Maybe not. Having the instructions page is important because it gives you the opportunity to suggest the text that's used in a link. The text that's used is important to your search engine rankings. By having your ideal suggestions for link text in a page on your site, some people will use your suggestions. Most probably won't, but some will and that will aid your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts. Believe it or not, there are a lot of sites that are operated by individuals with limited HTML skills. By providing the HTML code to copy and paste, you insure that these people will successfully link to your site. Every link counts. Even if adding this page to your site only gets you a handful of links you otherwise would not have had, it's worth it.

Plus, just having the link sitting there saying "Link to Me" will act as a suggestion and get some links you probably wouldn't have otherwise.

I already had "How to Link to Me" information on the contact page of my www.PhaseQuest.com web site, but I did't have a "How to Link to Me" page on this blog until I wrote this article. In fact, most sites don't. I'd fix that right away if I were you: in appreciation for my suggestion, go ahead and link back to this blog!

A "How to Link to Me" page should include a variety of suggested text links, icons, thumbnail images, and maybe even some banner ads. If you are suggesting links with images, give the well worn phrase "right-click to save images locally and then upload to your web server". Again, don't assume that everyone knows how to do these things, they don't.

You should put the suggested HTML in a textarea input tag so that the resulting page displays the actual HTML text and is easy for someone to copy and paste.

If you need to learn more about HTML, I have two FREE courses that will take you from zero to HTML hero in no time flat. Web Site Course: HTML, CSS, and More is an introduction to web design and Interactive Web Site Course: PHP, JavaScript, Forms and More teaches scripting. Both are free.

Here's my new How to Link to Me page.

Until Next Time,
Fred

About the Author

Fred Black is an experienced online business operator, programmer, web site developer, father, husband, musician, and songwriter. Visit his Internet Business Blog at: http://www.pqInternet.com.

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the About the Author resource box at the end intact.

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Posted by Fred on February 1, 2008 | Printer-Friendly

TrackBack: http://www.pqInternet.com/Blog/mt-tb.cgi/117

Assigned Categories: Search Engines: SEO | Web Site Design, HTML, CSS

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Comments:

From: Hill Robertson

Fred,

This is a great article. We do take it for granted many times about doing the simple things to help our readers like this. The more we can do to make a task we want done by someone else to be simpler, the better results we will get.

Also, we always teach in marketing about telling the reader what action to take. We can't assume they know what to do. We always tell them what to do like "subscribe now", "buy now", "click here", and so forth. So it makes sense to tell them how to "link to me".

Thanks again!

- Hill
Posted by Hill Robertson on February 1, 2008 1:32 AM
From: Kim

Learning the strategy in link building is such an important factor in internet business. 30 Minute Backlinks offers a tutorial on how to acquire tons of links tat could improve site ranking.
Posted by Kim on February 1, 2008 2:12 AM
From: Yicrosoft Directory

This is such a simple post but it will probably help out so many websites in their link building endeavors. By creating this page, they will have step by step instructions on how to add your link and help them so much in the short and long run.
Posted by Yicrosoft Directory on February 6, 2008 2:21 PM
From: Bob Walton

As long as we're not talking about link farms (frowned on by the search engines) then I think you have a good idea. I generally use a "Social Bookmark" this page approach, but your remarks are sound.
Posted by Bob Walton on February 6, 2008 7:20 PM
From Fred...

Thanks everyone for the positive comments!
Yes, this is a simple thing, but like a lot of simple things, it gets easily overlooked.

Bob - thanks for stopping by. There's nothing inherently "wrong" with link farms. While it's true, that to Google, or the other search engines, a link from a link exchange directory will not carry as much weight or value as a link stuck in the middle of a main page on a well visited site, it will still count. You might need 10 (or more) links from link directories to equal the weight of a single one-way link from a regular site, but they still count. What IS frowned on by search engines are links to and from (especially links to) bad neighborhoods. What's a bad neighborhood? A bad neighborhood is a site that deals with gambling, pornography, illegal software cracks and serial numbers, other illegal activities. If you have a link exchange directory on your site and have links to and from these kinds of sites, your ranking will probably suffer (as it should).

Take care,
Fred
Posted by Fred Black on February 6, 2008 7:52 PM
From: John

"bad neighborhood is a site that deals with gambling, pornography, illegal software cracks and serial numbers, other illegal activities"

Google is only too happy to take advertisers money for most of those so called bad neighborhood activities. Google also advertises for outright scams and frauds.
I would be happy to point some out if you want proof.
Pure hypocrasy for the almighty buck.
Posted by John on February 6, 2008 8:13 PM
From Fred...

John;
I tend to think you're right. Google will turn down some sites for advertising and PPC, but they will approve some of the sites that are considered "bad neighborhoods" by their ranking algorithm. I don't know that I'd call it pure hypocrisy - they're trying to rank sites and their ranking algorithm takes a lot of factors into account.

Thanks for stopping by,
Fred

Posted by Fred Black on February 6, 2008 8:36 PM
From: John

Fred
Type the [edited] word or even more obscene the [edited] word and see the Google adwords that they are collecting big bucks from on the right hand side

They don't want you to link to adult sites but they will take their money no problemo

I used to be involved with an anti-scam site that put up some Google adsense to help pay for their hosting.
They had to take the adsense off because they were advertising all the scams that the site was exposing! LOL

The scams that Google makes money off really burns me up. It might take some legal action to straighten Google out

You have a great business blog here. I'm waiting for you to make some new posts :P

Note from Fred: I [edited] some things out of this post to make it a little more family friendly, but the meaning stayed the same.
Posted by John on February 6, 2008 9:26 PM
From: Chas

"Bad Neighborhoods" is a judgment call, but really, unless you put on blinders, you can tell good sites from bad. Eric Ward, the grand master of "good links" explained it to me like this...you look at a site, if you like it and think it will stick around, then it's OK. If it looks like it was "machine made" or is in a questionable market, then move on.

He said our brain is pretty good at picking out the deadwood on the internet. He said if you can tell your mom about your new link partner, then it's ok.
Posted by Chas on February 7, 2008 4:03 PM
From: Cheap Nintendo Wii For Sale

I really enjoyed the post. You know, not on one of my blogs I have a how to link to me page. I better get started!
Posted by Cheap Nintendo Wii For Sale on July 21, 2008 9:51 PM