Unless the nature of your site expands or changes over time, establishing link categories for your links pages is generally a one time process. You may add or delete a category now and then, but your basic categories and the types of links you assign to each of them will most likely remain unchanged.

When setting up your link categories, remember that the primary function of your links is to provide site visitors with a gateway to useful, relevant information. To enable your end users to properly access this benefit, your link categories must be as relevant and tightly focused as the links themselves. It's also important to recognize that link categories have to be bi-directionally relevant, they have to be on-topic relative to your overall website content and related to all the other links under them.

As an example, a link to "discount car audio components" will be more effective in an "Automotive" category than in a "Special Offer" category, though listing in both would certainly be appropriate. Putting it in a "Rock Bands" category would not be relevant. Placing the same links in different categories when appropriate, however, is generally a good idea, as illustrated by the "car rental" entries in the "Travel" and "Weddings" categories on this page.

With increased search-engine emphasis on relevancy in determining page rank and return position, the issue of proper category assignment of links is now more important than ever. Fortunately, LinksManager makes creating subcategories to further target specific links to both end users and search engines an easy process.

Subcategories are like headings in an outline, they quickly direct the page visitor's eye to the particular information they're looking for, and they organize your links in the relevant order required by Google and other major search engines.

As noted above, listing car audio equipment in a "Rock Bands" category would not be relevant. But in a "Technology" or similar subcategory under a "Music" category that also contains subcategories for "Rock Bands," "DVDs," "Concerts," etc. would be both useful and relevant.

One other thing about setting up categories and subcategories is to put on your "end-user hat" when naming them. Ask yourself where you would expect to find information about "car audio" if you'd just blown a speaker in your SUV. Think about whether you should have a main "Entertainment" category with subcategories for DVDs, CDs, HDTV, etc. or separate main categories for "Audio" and "Video" with subcategories under each of them.

Most of all, remember to keep everything relevant to your website. If you've got a real estate site, you probably shouldn't have an "Entertainment" link category at all, except, possibly, one listing links to entertainment venues in the communities you serve. Likewise, if your business is selling computer parts, you shouldn't have a link category for vitamin supplements.

Finally, remember that link categories help webmasters determine if they should consider linking with you. So make sure you create link categories for every type of site that would consider linking with you. For example, if your site sells unique gifts, and you have unique gifts for babies, make sure you have a link category related to other baby related sites such as "Resources for Baby". Ask yourself, "have I created link categories that will attract links from all of the demographics my site targets?" The better classified that your link categories are, the more likely you will receive link requests from all of your link categories.

Here are five popular genres and some sample categories for those genres.

If you experience any difficulty setting up your links categories, feel free to Request Support and LinksManager's friendly staff will be happy to assist you.