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Article by LinksManager.com Staff -
© 2008, Reproduction without permission prohibited.
With tens or hundreds of trees of various types, sizes, categories and importance greening up your link forest, it's all too easy to lose sight of the most important link of all -- your Link To Links (L2L) link. Which may be the reason why so many of the troubleshooting questions our Help Desk receives have an L2L solution.
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it's imperative that you have a prominent L2L on your home page or, preferable, in the menu bar that appears on all your pages |
Basically, the L2L is the virtual spaceport through which Internet travelers -- end users, webmasters and search engine bots -- enter your world of links and exit resources. Without a properly functioning L2L, a collection of links becomes the classic haunted house "room without a window or door." No one can get out -- not so important in this case -- and no one can get in -- which is very, very important.
In theory, this sounds quite basic. If you have a page or pages full of relevant, informative, useful links, you should want your customers to be able to find them easily because they add weight and credibility to your site and can increase your sales. You also want other webmasters to be able to find them without any wasted time and energy because operators with top sites probably won't agree to exchange links with you if accessing your links page to see what's already on it is a hassle.
Therefore, it's imperative that you have a prominent L2L on your home page or, preferable, in the menu bar that appears on all your pages. Well, that's obvious, isn't it? Maybe so, but an amazing number of people forget to post the L2L altogether and an even larger number bury it in tiny type or hide in the boilerplate about site maps and privacy policies at the bottom of the page.
| If you must use a non-specific title in an L2L, "resources," or "information" are better choices than "links." | |
Another common problem is "broken" L2Ls. Link To Links that are hyperlinked to the wrong URL. When structuring your L2L, make sure that it points to your actual links page location (yourdomain.com/yourlinksubdirectory/yourlinkpage OR links.yourdomain.com) instead of, for example, linksmanager.com/userid.
Another L2L factor you should consider is the L2L's title ("yourlinkpage", in the above example). This title should almost always be optimized for end users as well as search engines.
In the old days ("old" being defined as three or more web years ago), before concepts like relevancy, specificity and focused content became part the of site-optimization mantra, many people simply named their L2L "Links." As a generic description that works -- it tells end users the types of items it would find on that page, a bunch of links to other sites.
On the downside, it doesn't reveal anything about the contents of those links -- they could be random links to sites of little interest to people visiting the host site or links to truly useful information. If you must use a non-specific title in an L2L, "resources," or "information" are better choices than "links."
Actually making your links page and L2L specific to your site's content is far better still. If you sell aquariums, for example, a properly optimized target URL for your links page might be something like "Fish Care FAQS. " This assumes, of course, that most of your links are to sites and pages within sites (deep links) that talk about fish care. If your links are directed to sites that sell complementary products like pumps and filters, a better target might be "Fish Care Accessories" or "Fish Care Accessory Resources".
In addition to menu bar and/or standalone L2Ls, it is also frequently productive to embed an L2L into a page's text. For example:
Regardless of whether you buy one of our glass or our acrylic aquariums, the number of fish you can house in a given size tank depends largely on the quality and capacity of your filter and aeration system. For information on recommended air pumps and filters, click here.
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In addition to menu bar and/or standalone L2Ls, it is also frequently productive to embed an L2L into a page's text. |
In this case, the "click here" is an L2L to your air pump and filter links page.
Your links page, in a very real if virtual sense, is the chain binding your website to other valuable locations throughout cyberspace. Like every other chain, it is only as strong as its weakest link. If that "weakest link" happens to be your L2L, your entire linking campaign may sink to its knees in poor-navigation quicksand. When you fully optimize your L2L for end users, you are likely to see a higher reciprocation rate.
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