Surprisingly, there are still people who have difficultly recognizing a hyperlink when they see one. The problem occurs particularly with links embedded within articles. While it's a great way reference external sources, hyperlinks within an article are often confused for emphasized text.

For example...


While many of us are experienced enough to know that the underlined text in the example above is a link, many more still don't realize they can click on that text.

I know this for a fact, because I get phone calls about this everyday.

I publish many other blogs besides this one, and many of those blogs are "product blogs", where I write reviews of products, or announce new products. Every article I write has a link to the manufacturer's website, or a link to a retailer. Someone will conduct a Google search for that product, and often times they find my blog.

Then, they'll call me on the phone asking me how they can purchase this product, or if I'm still selling it. The conversation goes something like this...

Caller: "Hi, I'm wondering if you're still selling the one gallon size of Soft Paws?"

Me: "Well, we don't sell products, we just write articles about products"

Caller: "Well, where can I buy it?".

Me: "In the article you read, there is a link to the manufacturer's website."

Caller: "I didn't see any link in the article".

Me: "It's there. Look for some words that are underlined, and then move your mouse pointer over it."

Caller: "Oh, I see it now! Thank you."

This conversation happens with greater severity during the Christmas season. In fact, I just received such a call this morning, around 6:30am Pacific time, while I was still sleeping.

Albeit as a real estate agent, you're not selling products. But if such a person needed your services, and they visited your website, they might also not realize that the underlined text are links.

Jakob Neilsen, who is perhaps the most respected authority on website usability, wrote a book entitled, Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency, where he said, "One of the most important aspects of usability is consistency in user interfaces." What he means is that today everyone's website works differently from one another, and this causes people to become confused in how to use a website. There are just as many websites that removed the underline on their hyperlinks, as there are websites that use them.

Here are some tips you can employ that might help your web-challenged visitors navigate better...

1. All links should be underlined. If you set the text-decoration parameter to "none" in your CSS, then turn it back on (remove the parameter altogether). I realize that links without underlines might look cool, but your visitors don't really care about the aesthetic appearance of your links.



2. Or, instead of underlines, use dashes or dots. More websites these days are doing this instead because it still gives the appearance of an underlined link, but the dashes or dots set it apart from emphasized text. For example, check out CSSPortal's examples on this: http://www.cssportal.com/hyperlinks/
   
   
3. Try also placing parentheses around the (hyperlinked text).
   
   
4. Use italics for emphasized text. This will create some additional differentiation from hyperlinked text.



5. Use call-to-action-words, like, "Click here". My favorite way to do this is to present a call-to-action statement, and then display the URL as a hyperlink. For example...




6. Linked text should consist of no more than three words as a general rule. The more words you string together in a single link, the more it starts to look like emphasized text.

Labels: Linking Strategies, Usability

There's a common perception among a minority of people that inbound links from an off-topic website will devalue the authority of your website.

That is, if your website is about Real Estate in Medford, Oregon, and another website about baseball cards is linking to yours, will that help or hurt the authority of your website?

The answer is that it won't hurt.

The better question is, how much can it really help?

Preface this by accepting the fact that you cannot control which websites link to yours. If someone with a website about baseball cards, decides to put a link to your real estate agent site (maybe because he thinks you're a great Realtor), it's nothing you can help.

Therefore, it's nothing that Google can penalize you for.

That link can only provide with some Google PageRank value, IF, Google decides to credit that link to your website. Remember that Google doesn't credit all inbound links to you; it only does so for those links that it feels meets its criteria, and falls into its authority algorithm.

So, if Google DOES credit you with that inbound link then it does provide you with some PageRank value. How much, will only be known to Google.

You can do a inbound links search for this blog, "link:http://www.realestatehow.com/", and you'll see that Google is crediting me for inbound links from dog blogs, motorcycle blogs, food blogs, business card blogs, and more. As long as you can see those links in that search results, Google has credited me with PageRank value from those sites, and of this writing, my homepage is a PR5 on the toolbar.

But does that help my authority?

Authority is the combination of the prominent keywords of a website, and the website's popularity. Thus, any inbound link that Google credits you with, adds to the popularity of your website, and thereby addresses at least half the equation for authority.

You can also raise your authority by publishing a continuous flow of content. Your blog is an excellent avenue for this. You can also strengthen your authority by one-to-one link exchanges between two blogs. This form of reciprocal linking still works very well when done between blogs, as far as SEO is concerned.

Summary

Authority is something that is well within your control. You can still enhance that authority even with inbound links from totally off-topic websites.

While inbound links from off-topic websites cannot hurt you, it's really more of a question of how much can it help you. It may not help you that much, but then again, that depends on other factors.

Labels: Linking Strategies

Question: If I post a comment on someone's blog, and that comment included a hyperlink to my website, will that link provide any SEO benefit for me?

Answer: Generally, no.

Many blog platforms, including Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad, insert the "rel=follow" attribute into the anchor tags of comments. If you were to post a comment on someone's blog, and included a hyperlink, that hyperlink will automatically have the "rel=nofollow" attribute added in by the blog platform.

So, all those hundreds of comment spam you posted on people's blogs, was all for naught. Google won't count them as backlinks, nor will it count them as anchor text, nor even follow them.

The only thing it's good for is to get direct traffic, that is, a click through from the comment.

If you want an inbound link from a blog, try contacting the blog owner and asking them. Reciprocal links, on a one-to-one basis still works very much between blogs. Google doesn't downplay nor ignore one-to-one reciprocal linking between blogs, because as I've said before, Google loves blogs.

It's true, however, that Google hates "spam blogs", but then you're not publishing a spam blog, right?

Labels: Linking Strategies, SEO

Here's one way to get a free inbound link to your blog.

There are several blogs out there that seem to make a habit of republishing other people's blog posts, by way of your blog's RSS feed. They republish your full article, without making edits to your article.

An example of such a blog is "Bored Property". They republished my article, "Business Websites Look Too Cold"...

http://property.boredblogs.net/business-looking-websites-look-too-cold/

Notice that half way down the article, there's a link on the phrase, "Put Your Photo on Your Website".

When I wrote the article on my blog, I placed this link to an older article of mine. Thus, by republishing my article, they copied the link as well. Hence, I have an inbound link from them.

So, as a good practice, try to find a way to link to one of your other pages on each new article you write. That link could very well up becoming an inbound link on someone else's site.

Labels: Linking Strategies