Article by LinksManager.com Staff - © 2008, Reproduction without permission prohibited.

Supercharge Your Site By Multitasking Links

Web pages , even entire websites, are nothing more than a collection of elements, the sum of which is -- hopefully -- worth more than the total of its parts.

Headlines, illustrations or captions alone on a page or pages will not have as a great an impact on readers as they will if grouped together in one location as a single element.

Equally true, the quality of each individual element is a major factor in how effective the overall presentation will be.

If the photograph is uninteresting but the text and headline are compelling, the combination may be persuasive with people who think in words and less effective with those who visualize in pictures. And, of course, the reverse is true when the image is great and the words uninspired.

Likewise, a really great photo without a caption may drive some customers to an order page, but it won't do anything to help a site's PageRank -- search engine bots don't analyze pictures. In the best case scenario, all three pieces of the puzzle sizzle and the combination becomes almost irresistibly attention grabbing to humans and relevant and interesting to search bots.

Basically, each site element should be designed to multitask. To simultaneously satisfy end users and search engines and, in some cases, also perform jobs such as reinforcing brand recognition, establishing geographic reference points, delivering user instructions, etc.

In their most basic forms, most links are composed of several elements -- the actual hyperlink, the site title or description and some anchor text. In order for links to successfully multitask and positively impact both human viewers and search-engine robots, it's important that each of those elements be fine tuned.

Until recently, the primary search-engine task of a link was simply to exist. Ever since Google made tabulating links a point of emphasis in assigning PageRank and return position more than ten years ago, obtaining links and exchanging links have been an integral part of the SEO process.

Times change, however, and so do points of emphasis. Despite what you may have heard or read elsewhere, Google and the other major search engines still count links -- reciprocal links, back links, blog links and all kinds of links -- and factor them into their ranking algorithms.

What Google and some other engines don't put as much emphasis on today as in the past is the sheer volume of the links attached to a site. Quality has replaced quantity in the search engine equation. Relevancy, legitimacy, integrity, freshness, appropriateness and Google alone knows what else have become the determinant factors in how much of a boost a given link may or may not give a site's PR.

There's nothing sinister or even unusual in this shift in how links are evaluated. It's simply a product of the natural evolution of search-engine technology, which has similarly affected the way search engines look at virtually all site elements. It has nothing to do with search engines losing their appreciation for the value of quality links.

Ten years ago, web crawlers and the servers that hosted them didn't have the power, speed or sophistication to perform complex tasks like linguistic analysis, deep data drilling and microsecond searches for duplicate content, doorway pages, hidden text and numerous other "gray area" practices. What past generations of SE bots did was count things -- links, keywords, metatags and the like -- and subject the counts to some basic statistical analysis that would throw up a red flag if, for example, the words "work from home" showed up 300 times on one web page.

Today, thanks to quantum improvements in mainframe hardware and network connectivity plus a few billion aggregate SE investment dollars in more sophisticated algorithms, all that has changed. Metatags seem to have been devalued almost to irrelevancy by some SEs and keywords are evaluated in the context of the copy surrounding them rather than in a standalone vacuum.

Same with links. To work most effectively a link -- even a quality, relevant link -- should be constructed to give both end users and search engines positive information that goes beyond the bare facts of the link itself.

Here's a before and after example of an multitasking backlink -- in other words a link to your site from another site:

Hyperthyroid Pet Care www.johndoeveterinarian.com Twenty-five years experience treating dogs and cats suffering from hyperthyroidism and other diseases of the thyroid.

Hyperthyroid Pet Care In Seattle www.johndoeveterinarian.com Twenty-five years experience treating dogs and cats suffering from hyperthyroidism and other thyroid diseases with advanced drug, radiation and surgical therapies.

In the past, both the first example and the second example would have been, roughly, equally effective. Google would have tabulated the link, checked to see that the site it was located on was relevant to yours and free of search-engine spam, and rated the link accordingly.

Using today's more sophisticated algorithms, however, Google will likely find much more of positive interest in the second example. The Seattle reference in the title, for instance, addresses (pardon the pun) most search engines current emphasis on localization. And listing the types of therapies available feeds the SE's appetite for specificity. And it's obvious how the second link's less generic content provides more robust information to end users.

Creating a multitasking back link like the one in this example is easy if you think of your link as a 15-second TV or radio spot rather than a Star Trekkie-type transporter for getting people from one website to another.

Here's a trick that might help. Since most of us talk far more than we write, we tend to organize our thoughts better in spoken words than written one. Imagine what you might tell a customer about your business in a very brief telephone conversation. Chances are the first 15 or 20 words will be excellent as anchor text.

Now let's look at the other side of the coin. The reciprocal (forward) link that appears on Dr. John Doe's site. For purposes of this example, let's say that one of www.johndoeveterinarian.com's link partners is a local dog groomer.

Their existing link looks like this:

World-Class Pet Grooming www.hairofthehound.com On-site or mobile hair trimming, nail clipping, bathing, styling and other services for your precious pets.

Not much multitasking going on in terms of advancing the www.johndoeveterinarian.com cause. The sole benefit of that element being on Dr. John Doe's site comes from the reciprocation -- from John Does' link on hairofthehound.com.

But suppose we rewrite the pet grooming link a bit:

Seattle's World-Class Pet Groomer www.hairofthehound.com Hair trimming, nail clipping, bathing, styling and other services for your precious dog or cat. Mobile service available throughout Seattle-Tacoma or visit our downtown salon.

What we have here is not just a forward link, it's a fully formed webpage element that integrates perfectly with four of www.johndoeveterinarian.com's core keywords -- Seattle, Seattle-Tacoma, dog and cat.

There is nothing exotic or improper about this element. It is pure text and instantaneously recognizable by search bots, it is not a gratuitous use of keywords since they are all relevant to the link's message, and it clearly doesn't constitute keyword stuffing. What it is, is an accurate, relevant, highly specific description of what HairOfTheHounds does and where it does it. It provides solid, useful information to end users, which happens to be exactly what most SE guidelines say they want content elements to do.

It's a winning link because the end-user friendly references to service area and specific services and types of clients (dogs and cats) will improve www.hairofthehound.com's clickthrough and conversion rates and the inclusion of keywords relevant to the host page may help www.johndoeveterinarian.com's PageRank.

Creating multitasking forward links does require you to email your link partners and suggest they change their link content to something more dynamic, but the chances are good they'll thank you for the suggestion when they realize how beneficial it is to both of you.

It's common, a cliché actually, to say that links are the "building blocks" of the web. But they're really much more than that. Building blocks offer support, they hold things together, without them the building would fall apart.

This is also true of links, without them there would be no web ... it would disintegrate into billions of discrete unconnected pages.

But links are not just building blocks that connect and support. They are also the blood vessels that carry the web's life force -- information -- from one user to the next. Setting up your links to multitask will take a little bit of time and a small amount of effort, but it's a surefire way to convert those links from constricted capillaries to free-flowing arteries.