Linking to Sucess
So… let’s talk about links. Those little blue lines that save customers and clients boat loads of time looking through your site to find what they need. Links are a wonderful tool, but as with all tools, if they’re not used with care you can end up with a mess on your hands; just like I almost did the other day.
I was getting ready to send out a cold prospecting email to a potential client and part of that email contained a testimonial (or review if that sounds better) from one of my other clients. In the testimonial there was a link included to their website, but as I hovered over it I realized I’d almost made a huge mistake. Somehow I hadn’t typed in the company’s full domain name and the partial name belonged to a totally different site I’d never even seen.
I quickly corrected my mistake and soon the email was ready to be sent out. This is a perfect example of how important correct and functional links can be. Just think what would have happened if the client had read that testimonial and then clicked on the link only to be brought to a site which had nothing in common with the testimonial.
At best it would have been embarrassing and looked sloppy; at worse the client could have thought I was a scammer and put my email in the spam folder.
Feast or Famine Links
Besides leading to the right page, links should also be placed appropriately. You shouldn’t have to hunt all over your site to find that one link you stuck in the corner, but you also shouldn’t have a truck load either (there are a few exemptions such as a list with links to outside articles).
Putting links in where they don’t naturally fit makes your site look sloppy and unprofessional to both buyers and search engines. If the phrase "unethical copy" is coming to your mind you're right on the money; this is yet another shade of grey to deal with.
I'm gonna pause right here and say something very important. I'm hoping that everybody reading this already knows, but just in case you don't never, and I mean NEVER link to someone else's content without giving some kind of disclaimer that it's not your work. Forgetting to do that can cause you major headaches farther down the road and even a lawsuit if you're not careful.
All right, now that that's out of the way let's continue.
When it comes to links it's a lot like using crutches. What I mean by that is that just like you only use crutches when you need them, you should only insert links where they will be useful. For example, when you're writing a blog post you might briefly cover part of a topic that you could actually do a whole other blog post on. When this happens what you should do is make that brief mention a link to another blog post that you'll write covering the subject in detail.
Now, this might sound like extra work for no reason, but hear me out. This is a very well-known and very useful technique to get Google and other search engines to see your site as having valuable information. The way that it works is that when the search engines sees a blog post with a link to another blog post it automatically assumes that that one is more valuable because it has more content about more subjects even if it's just via a link. So in reality this is the internet version of saying "Hey, I know more than that guy come and listen to what I have to say."
So what are some good ways to incorporate links? Here’s three…
#1 Linking Your Blog Post to Other Blog Posts
This can be a link to another blog on your website, or someone else’s blog (just make sure to give them full credit). You can set yourself up for easy link insertion by writing a blog that covers a somewhat broad topic and then writing other blogs that focus on the different parts of that topic. Another method is to give lists of outside articles that might me of interest to your reader, and on top of that this is a common email template that works very well.
#2 Linking to Your Products
Whether it's on the home page, in your blog or sent out in a promotional email you have to have a link to your products. Now, you might be thinking that it’s a waste of time and copy to put a link to the product page on your website when people can just scroll up to the top and click on the page tab itself, but I’ll let you in on a little secret… People don’t want to scroll up to the top. If you’ve been able to spark their interest you need to give them a link right there and then, because people can lose interest in something on the internet in less than 2.5 seconds and them having to scroll up to the top can cut that down to 0.
#3 Links on Your Social Media
Every business needs to have a presence on at least one social media platform, preferably two or more. Posts are an excellent place to get lots of link traffic, in fact linking to a product or web page is pretty much the status quo.
If you follow those three tips for link placement I can guarantee your website and business will profit from it. And on that note, let me finish by saying I hope you all have a great Christmas tomorrow.
See you next year.