Web Links: What Are Web Links and Should You Care?
A web link is like a road from one place to another. If you want to get from Point A to Point B, you have to use the road. To get from one place to another on the Internet, you have to click a link. Because they guide traffic, web links have a bigger role marketing your business, no matter where you link to. Sometimes these places are all within your own website. Sometimes they connect one website to another.
Good web links and good country roads have something in common: meaningful names
If you travel down a road named "St. Thomas Church Road" you can guess by the name what destination you're likely to reach. Well-named web links work the same way. A web link with a descriptive name informs you fast about where you'll go when you click it.
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It's very important to choose the right words for web links. If you're building a business website, you will be linking your own pages to each other. And you'll be linking your site to helpful resources on other sites. Some people tend to use "click here" to name their links. But there is not much meaning in "click here."
Readers get more value skimming meaningful links
Instead, you want to use meaningful text for your links. Good text makes your web content more useful to people. For example, "our flower arrangement catalog tells a person -- and a search engine-- what's important about the page. "Catalog" helps less. "Click here" does almost nothing to help your page get the attention you want.
Because link text stands out in contrast to plain text in a browser, your visitors are more likely to read than skip it when skimming. Your link text is a valuable opportunity to build meaning-at-a-glance, and to engage visitors.
You get more value from search engine robots when your web links reflect your topic
Search engines read your link text, too, and meaningful link text makes it possible for your page to perform better in search engines.
Link text has more weight than plain text when an indexing robot scans your page. Indexing programs, like Googlebot, give web links more value when formulating what your page is about. You help yourself rank better in Google, Yahoo and Bing if your web links reflect your topic.
Kick the "click here" habit
"Click here" is a habit many web writers have fallen into. But if you can keep the image in mind of your visitor traveling down a long dusty road to meet you, you'll remember how helpful the right words are to lead them your way.
Joanne Masterson helps business owners launch websites that people and search engines can read quickly and easily. You get more than a site that's 'up' -- your visitors get meaning-at-a-glance, and your pages get indexed quickly. Find out more at bluejprojects.com. Web Links: What Are Web Links and Should You Care? By Joanne Masterson. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joanne_Masterson. EzineArticles.com
