Links are a kind of gold on the net. They can be a currency, they make your site look pretty, they can make you more money and everyone will do anything to get them. It sometimes seems that people will do as many crazy things to get links as they once did to scrabble for gold in the gold rush days. With so much effort put into getting your links, it’s a downright shame to use them to less than capacity.
Messy internal links
It’s important to ensure that the text linking your internal pages is relevant to the page the link lands on. This is something that is easy to get mixed up. When optimising content, it’s natural to focus on the keywords for that page. Internal links need to feature the keywords for the linked-to page. For example, a clothing retail site’s ‘women’s wear’ page might have embedded links to the ‘kids’ wear’ page. The keywords for a women’s wear page will have obvious differences to those for a kids’ wear page. The link to the latter should be placed within something that gives a clear pointer to the kids’ wear section, whether it’s brand-based, like ‘SpongeBob’, or more generic, like ‘caring for your children’. Users and search engines appreciate knowing where they’re being sent to.
Lousy links
Links can be difficult to get at the best of times, and links from well-ranked websites can be incredibly hard to attain. The effort is worth it, however. The links coming in to your site are votes of confidence from the internet world. In the real world, a vote of confidence from the mayor counts more than one from a guy down the pub. Similar things are true of inbound links.
Link text: inside and outside
The text that anchors a link can be just as valuable to your ranking as the link itself. This text tells the search engines a little more about the page the link sends to. It’s not always possible to control link anchor text with inbound links, but sometimes you can suggest text to the linking site. Selecting link text is an important part of your search engine optimisation, and you can talk to our consultants at SEO Consult when you want to make optimum use of link anchors.
Link landings
Many businesses make the mistake of directing all of their inbound links to their home page. Considering the amount of work it takes to get any inbound link, it is a waste to direct users to a generic page. Inbound links come from careful study as part of your search engine optimisation strategy. Use that information to send users to a page that targets them specifically.
Link errors
While every site will occasionally throw a 404 Not Found page at its users, it’s something to be avoided. It’s not the end of the world when one of these pages comes up, but you need to be watchful for them and fix the problems behind them swiftly. Link checks should be a part of your regular site maintenance.
