Web Links: What Are Web Links and Should You Care?

A web link is like a road from one place to another. If you want to
get from Point A to Point B, you have to use the road. To get from one
place to another on the Internet, you have to click a link. Because
they guide traffic, web links have a bigger role marketing your
business, no matter where you link to. Sometimes these places are all
within your own website. Sometimes they connect one website to
another.Good web links and good country roads have something in
common: meaningful namesIf you travel down a road named "St. Thomas
Church Road" you can guess by the name what destination you're likely
to reach. Well-named web links work the same way. A web link with a
descriptive name informs you fast about where you'll go when you click
it.It's very important to choose the right words for web links. If
you're building a business website, you will be linking your own pages
to each other. And you'll be linking your site to helpful resources on
other sites. Some people tend to use "click here" to name their links.
But there is not much meaning in "click here."Readers get more value
skimming meaningful linksInstead, you want to use meaningful text for
your links. Good text makes your web content more useful to people.
For example, "our flower arrangement catalog tells a person -- and a
search engine-- what's important about the page. "Catalog" helps less.
"Click here" does almost nothing to help your page get the attention
you want.Because link text stands out in contrast to plain text in a
browser, your visitors are more likely to read than skip it when
skimming. Your link text is a valuable opportunity to build
meaning-at-a-glance, and to engage visitors.You get more value from
search engine robots when your web links reflect your topicSearch
engines read your link text, too, and meaningful link text makes it
possible for your page to perform better in search engines.Link text
has more weight than plain text when an indexing robot scans your
page. Indexing programs, like Googlebot, give web links more value
when formulating what your page is about. You help yourself rank
better in Google, Yahoo and Bing if your web links reflect your
topic.Kick the "click here" habit"Click here" is a habit many web
writers have fallen into. But if you can keep the image in mind of
your visitor traveling down a long dusty road to meet you, you'll
remember how helpful the right words are to lead them your way.