Active Rain University - Proper Use of Links in Blog Posts

Active Rain University - Proper Use of Links in Blog Posts

I must admit that I thought this class was going to be about back linking, but Bob presented a class that was even more relevant to my blog posts. He challenged me to get to work on my IDX and make it pay for itself :) If you read on, it may challenge you.

Here are the most important pieces I took away from the hour+ that Bob spent with us.

Some important terms to understand -

Title Tag - these are the words that show up in the tab at the top of your site on every page. Make sure these words reflect what is on the page - title tags match anchor text, match content on page.
Anchor Text - this is what you highlight in your blog that becomes a link to something else
Open in New Window - Do this when you are creating a link and you want the reader to come back to your original landing page
Open in Same Window - Do this when you don't care if they come back to where they found you; you have them where you want them, on your IDX site
Framed - when an IDX page is framed, the search engines can't read anything that is in the page
Indexable - this is an unframed page and search engines, aka spiders, can read and index what is on the page.

Tips -

1. When you have multiple links with good anchor text on your page, the spiders will click from link to link trying to find a way out of the page. While clicking, they will read and index the page.
2. Beware - more is not necessarily good. From the previous sentence, you might think, "Well, then I want lots of links on each page." It's more important to have a few with pinpoint precision relevant to the content on the page than a 100 random links.
3. Some spots where you should remember to add links - Signature at the end of each blog; Links area on the right hand side of your Active Rain blog.
4. Want to know how to make "buttons?" Go to cooltext.com Buttons are great to add in your signature and also to highlight a special offer.

Even though the class focused mainly on IDX and how to use it, the same is true for linking from your blog to a post on your website, or from a new post to an old post. This is called "deep linking" and Google likes it. It makes your post more robust and appear more authoritative. As explained above, the spiders index the links on the way out and your post will rank higher because of it.

One last point - make it EASY for people to find houses on your site. Too many clicks and they will be gone. So make your Anchor Text specific and if possible, take the reader to exactly what the text says. If it says "Short Sales in Seattle" - the reader wants to see those homes, not click, set up a search for short sales and click again to reach the homes.