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Usability: Types of Links

In this issue we'll consider the use of inbound and outbound links and their influence on Web site traffic. By María José Serres, ARTech's Marketing Team.

Definition
A link is a reference in a hypertext document that points to another hypertext document or to a different part of the same document. Navigators usually display links in another color, font or font style to distinguish them from the rest of the text.

Types of links

Inbound link: A link pointing to my site from an external site. These links are indispensable from the marketing point of view, as they attract visitors from another Web site to mine. Many times these visitors are potential clients, as they come from content-related sites. If I have a Web site to sell bathroom articles, for example, there might be a link pointing to my site from a site offering building solutions. The visitors of that site are interested in building, and they will visit my site looking for solutions to build a bathroom. These visitors are potential buyers for my articles, rather than just visitors.

Inbound links are also very important because they improve the ranking position of my Web site on the searching tools that use link popularity as part of their algorithm.

You can find a mathematical analysis of the effect of inbound links on search engine rankings in http://pr.efactory.de/e-inbound-links.shtml

Outbound link: A link from my site to an external site. There are two attitudes toward the use of outbound links. Proponents argue that offering high quality references enhances the value of a site and increases the chance of return visitors. Opponents of outbound linking argue that it is a way of losing visitors, as they abandon the site.

You can find a mathematical analysis of the effect of outbound links on search engine rankings in http://pr.efactory.de/e-outbound-links.shtml

In my opinion, outbound links are good as long as they increase the user's knowledge on what he/she is reading in my site. For example, if I have a business partners' page, it is a good thing to have a link in each partner's name, so users can see my partners' sites and value my product/brand/service based on the quality of my partners.

I don't think it's a good idea to use reciprocal linking if there is no way of relating the other site to my product, content, etc. For example, if I sell bathroom articles, the value of my site will not be enhanced by a link to Mercedes Benz, unless they have used my articles for all the bathrooms in the company!

Orphan Pages: Pages without links pointing to them are called orphan pages. Many search engines do not index orphan pages.

 

Recommendations:

1- For outbound links: Open the external site page on a new navigator. This could be accomplished by the following GeneXus code:

Linkexterno.link = link('http://www.genexus.com/')

Linkexterno.linktarget= ?_blank'

Where Linkexterno is a textblock. The procedure is similar for a variable or a visible attribute in the webform.

2- For inbound links: Use tools to identify broken links, orphan pages, etc. in my site. Broken links damage the site's image and search tools may index a non-existent page because the link pointing to it is wrong. The following are some online tools to analyze these cases:

Tools
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
http://www.elsop.com/linkscan/
http://www.netmechanic.com/link_check.htm
http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.broken-link-finder.htm
http://lithopssoft.com/hlv/

 

 

 

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