Soft. Hard, Text Links. What does it all mean and are you using them correctly?
By Chris Hamono
When you start to learn about Web site Marketing invariably you come across these terms, So what do they all mean? and how do they impact upon your marketing campaign?
In this article we will be looking from the perspective of raising awareness of your web site through Search engines…
For starters a link is a clickable part of your web page that invariably leads to another web page. it can be a word a phrase, an image or any other visible element. we are all familiar with them otherwise you would not have found this article.
Soft Links are also known as scripted links, they don't exist until the page they are on is displayed, and then a small script on that page creates the link dynamically. these links are of no value from a marketing perspective, unless it is your intention to keep Search engine spiders away (there can be good reasons for this). AVOID spending time getting links from people who only use soft links, they are wasting your valuable time.
Hard Links are written into the page they are always there no matter whether the user has scripting enabled or disabled, this is the most common form of link and the best. all search engines can find them and that's important from a marketing perspective. They come in two main flavours, Image or Text.
Image Links. When looking at a web page you may see some snazzy little pictures which seem to lead to some exciting or interesting little tidbit you want to find out about, So you click on it. That’s an Image link, But Beware Search engine spiders don’t have eyes. They are blind to the image. So they have to guess what the link is about. This guess is taken from the text around the image and from the page the image points to. But as good as they are spiders aren’t people and they get it wrong a lot. Beware of Image links. Always fill in the “alt” text field and its best to back it up with a PROPER text link.
Text Links. These are hard links that are made up purely from text. No images scripting or other trickery. They are the original “Hyper Text” and where HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) got its name. They are also for our purposes the most powerful marketing tool. People click on them more than any other type of link, Spiders follow them with ease. And more importantly they describe in just a few words what the target page is all about.
Avoid using complicated sentences for your text links, use simple text. And most importantly use the words that people are going to search on as the text link.
EG: (linked text is shown by brackets) Bad: Get your blue widgets [here] So So : [Get your blue widgets here] Good : Get your [blue widgets] here
Many people use the “here” word to indicate that the user needs to click here to get the blue widget, and most users understand this. But a search engine spider only sees the “here” word which is meaningless so it ignores the link. The smarter spiders will work out what the link is about the same as an image link, but its best not to force them to think, they do a better job just collecting information.
If you stick to the basics, Then Search Engine Spiders will deal with you kindly, if you don’t you may miss out on some very important traffic. Traffic that could make or break a website.
About the author:
Chris Hamono has been Marketing on the Internet since '97. He currently runs Managed Links, a text linking service designed to increase search engine awareness of your website http://www.managedlinks.com
