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I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential. Read, subscribe to my newsletter, enjoy!Tash

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What makes a good link?

Every website  and blog owner knows, or soon learns, that links are a great way to build traffic and search engine rankings. And most realise that incoming and outgoing links are both important parts of the equation.

But what makes a good link? How do you want to be presented on other sites and blogs when they are linking to you?

Obviously, you can’t always control how people link to you – you often don’t know about links until after they are established – but if you are prepared, you can increase your chances of getting good links, and offer good ones in return.

Many people assume a banner link (that is, an image of your business is linked to you rather than text) is the best option. This is not really true. People looking at the site may notice a banner sooner than text, of course, but don’t always respond more to a picture than to a few well written sentences. And not everyone realises that a banner can be clicked on as a link – they look for underlined text as a link. What is more important though, is that search engines can’t read images so any text in the banner itself is not picked up by a search engine.

So a text link is often more effective. But even then, some text links are better than others. For instance, a descriptive link to my article on formatting letters is more effective than just a link to Word Constructions as it gives the search engines and readers more information.

As you read my blog and website, you will notice that I try to include a description in every link to add more value to you and those I link to. Is this something you will try now?

Happy writing!

Link to relevant information

When writing about a product or information elsewhere, ensure people know what you are referring to. Your words will then make sense, especially if you are giving instructions or reviewing the item in question.

For example, I just read an email that said “Just go to the very bottom of the page and find my items” There was no link and there were no items listed at the end of the email, so I had no idea what page I should be looking at the bottom of!

If you are sending an email and referring to a particular product, webpage, article or whatever, include a link to it or attach it to the email. That way people are not confused and don’t have to waste time trying to find what you are writing about.

Likewise, if you are writing in your blog or on your website, add links to your products, articles and testimonials instead of referring to them and letting people find the information themselves. For example, my article about clear communications may give you more information about why to include a link. But are you going to search for it? Much easier if I say the article is available by clicking on this link, isn’t it?