Linking has a lot to do with getting our content to rise to the top of the heap. It also makes Web browsing more convenient and enjoyable for the reader. You want to link to your own stuff and to factoids by others. They may eventually bounce off your content, hopefully by a paying ad, or to your site, but either way the longer you keep a reader around, the better your chances of getting some goodies.
Lesson #3 How to link your articles
First, let me explain how to do this technically:
- Go to the site that you want to link to in your article, even if it is another Factoid. Go to that page. Left click and hold as you scroll over the “http:// whatever.com” at the top of the page, highlighting it. Now, right click and select “copy”
- In the body of your factoid highlight (left click hold, scroll over) the word in the sentence that you want to be clickable link a.k.a. hyperlink to the page you want to link up to –DO NOT right click and copy; instead:
- Go to the top tool bar and look for a symbol with a chain (links) and left click on that. You will see a little box come up.
- Erase the “http://” that comes up in the box, and then while the cursor is in the top line of that box, right click and paste.
- Click on the “insert” button.
If you do it right, the word or phrase in the sentence will show up in a different color, and will sometimes be underlined. If you scroll over it with the arrow, it will change to a finger, showing that it can be clicked on.
There are a lot of debates about the most effective way to link. This discussion involves back links, reciprocal links, one-way links, page rank of incoming links, and the beat goes on. Don’t sweat all that. Just link up to anything you can that will serve as a good reference or if you are citing it as a source. Keep it neat and clean by using anchor text also called hyperlinks as I explained above.
Get out to other sites, for instance a discussion on a CraigsList forum, and post links back to your factoids if they are pertinent to the discussion. Sometimes you’ll get called a “spammer” but this is only by people who have appointed themselves as spam cops, even though they often blow their whistle at stuff that isn’t spam. Many times you will get a discussion going about the topic of your article.
Another good way to build a web of links is by commenting on factoids, and including a link to your factoid in the comments. Don’t over-do it. Make sure you are linking to their content in your articles and allowing them to put a link in yours. Also, when posting a comment, try to include some of the words that are contextual to the keywords (LSI, remember lesson #1?) and theme of the article, and even some of the actual keywords.
I’m not sure if it is better to post a 400 word comment, or to just write a comment as a factoid and post a link to it in the comments of the factoid you are responding to. My guess is that it doesn’t make a lot of difference. I’m going to try it the latter way in an upcoming response to my circumcision factoid that I plan to ghost post. I have a factoid on dream interpretation that I am trying to keep all together in the comments. If anyone has some knowledge on that, post it in the comments. Thanks!
