I was talking to an agent the other day who mentioned that many of the websites we customize for clients look very similar. And, that’s true – there are key elements that any website needs to have in order to be effective.
One of these elements relates to good internal linking. All of the home pages on sites that we customize have “graphic buttons” on the home page to quickly direct visitors to key pages on the site, for example. While these buttons aren’t text links that have effective *anchor text, the buttons do have keyword phrases as ALT tags, which the search engines read.
We also make sure that the home page introduces the visitor to the website. We want visitors to know what information and tools are available to them on the website. So, we add content that briefly describes pages of interest that are in addition those represented by the buttons.
Internet surfers in general don’t read every word on a website, but they will scan a page. Therefore, we make sure that the link colors on the site have a good contrast from the background color and the color of the text. And, we make sure that links are underlined, but only the links. Underlining for emphasis on a website only serves to confuse the visitor.
That may sound silly, but there are many designers who think that underscored links in a contrasting color are ugly. These designers try to hide links as much as possible so as not to conflict with the design. We think that’s silly. The links are there for a reason. If they are easily identifiable, a visitor scanning down the page will be much more likely to click on one.
But, there’s another good reason to have links on your home page to other internal pages. For one thing, you may realistically drive more traffic to your interior pages if visitors find links easily. The other consideration is the search engines. If you use good anchor text* on your home page when you’re linking to internal pages, those links give the search engines a good idea about the content of the page they’re about to visit.
So, while you want to concentrate on getting good incoming links to your website, don’t forget the importance of good internal linking. Giving visitors and the search engines as many ways as possible to get to your web pages is a good thing!
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*Anchor Text – The words that are used as the link to another website or web page. Good anchor text includes keyword phrases.
