A good blog should be loaded with helpful links to other sites. Why?

1. Offering useful links positions you as the go-to source for excellent info on your topic. Readers who trust your link will come back for more.
2. The owners of the sites you link to will often link back to you – or refer their readers to your site – a win-win for everyone.
3. Search engines index hyperlinks; when you link properly, your blog will move up in the rankings.

Many bloggers hyperlink incorrectly. All too often, their links look like this:

For more info on this topic, click here.

What do you suppose the phrase “click here” means to a search engine?

Absolutely nothing.

When you create a hyperlink, never highlight the phrase, “click here.”

Instead, highlight the keyword-rich anchor text, like this:

In this tutorial, I’ll teach you how to link to your Facebook business page from your Facebook profile.

I could have hyperlinked two parts of this sentence:

1. The link to the Facebook tutorial (which I did).
2. A link to my Facebook profile (which I didn’t, because I want people who follow my blog visit Blogging Bistro’s Facebook page).

Your Assignment:

Scan your 10 most recent blog posts for hyperlinks. Did you hyperlink the anchor text? If not, go back and update your links. Do it now before you forget!

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• Bright Ideas Blogzine (Sept 08) -  How to cross-promote through linking