If you’ve been following this series on Successful Web Site Design, you now have a site that is in tune with your audience, has clear navigation, and the content of each page is optimised to engage your readers both visually and informationally. Great. But what are the chances of its being discovered by your target audience?
Source: flickr.com via Kristen on Pinterest
Yes, this is where ‘traditional marketing’ strategies can help, in the advertising of your website’s existence. But what can you do in the online world to assist? The answer – links, links, and more links.
The developer of GoodOldTalk once explained links to me this way. “Think of a bucket,” he said. “Your website is a bucket, and every link is like hole in that bucket. The more holes, the more chances that traffic will leave your site and go elsewhere. So the idea is – to have more incoming links (as in, holes in other people’s websites that link to your site) than outgoing links.” These inching links are also known as backlinks, inbound links, or inlinks. I don’t know about you, but that makes a lot of sense to me. Why else would Wikipedia articles only link to Wikipedia articles?!!
So, backlinks are good. But how do you generate them? In my experience, there are two main ways.
1. Reciprocal links. This is where you promote another site (by adding their link on your site – ie. putting a hole in your bucket, to them) and request a reciprocal link to your site (i.e. they put a hole in their site, back to you). This may work well with your business partners.
2. Online advertising. The aim is to get links to your website in as many places as possible out there on the web. Yes, you could pay for these ads (use Google AdWords or AdSense, Facebook ads etc) or you can use the power of the digital realm itself to aid in your site’s discoverability. Add a photo and / or review of your business at your location on Google Maps. Create a Wikipedia page. Use social media in your own business’ name. Leverage Facebook and twitter – or even YouTube, flickr, and the like – to get the word out, and link your updates to a variety of interesting content on your site. On social media, there is a chance that your tweet or Facebook update may be shared by your followers, thus increasing your potential audience.
There are other ways to generate back links – purchasing, going with backlink directories, and so on. If this is your style, then great. Personally, I prefer to not use these, but rather to form ‘genuine’ relationships, through your business partners, social media. and the like.
Finally, think about how to optimise your use of links-within-your-website. Obviously every page that has a call to action, whether it be sign up for a webinar, place an order for a free eBook or actual online purchase, submit an online enrolment form or even just an email subscription or RSS feed for your site, should have multiple links pointing at it. On the other hand, don’t overwhelm your site with these links. This not only is visually distracting, but could make you seem overly-needy. And the same holds true if you have a blog either on, or pointing to, your site. Putting a link on every second word is like hashtagging every second word in a tweet. You can do it, but it’s not particularly good netiquette.
So – that was Hint #4 in this series on ‘Successful Website Design’. Use links to ‘let in the light’, as it were. Have you seen examples of websites which use links well? Or ones which do this badly? Please feel free to share in the comments!
