How To Select Your Target URLs
Why do webmasters link to external pages?
Can You Guess why?
Click or hover to find out.
Because the page the webmaster is linking to adds insight and context to the content and is a helpful resource for the reader.
What content would benefit a webmaster's readers?
Short Answer:
Any content-heavy page.
Long Answer:
Generally, pages that are not in the gray quadrants below.
Any page with helpful images, video, quotes, claims, or statistics is a page that a webmaster would reasonably link to. These resources make it easy to justify linking to the Target URL.
Any page that is almost exclusively about the brand or their product, is either very difficult or would show bias, which most webmasters wouldn't do unless they have a tie to the brand somehow. This kind of Target URL can be difficult to justifiably link to.
Any page that has nearly no text, would be extremely difficult or impossible to justify linking to.
* Homepages and Locally-Focused pages can fall anywhere on the spectrum, but good ones use images, video, quotes, claims, or statistics that a webmaster would reasonably link to. These content resources make it easy to justify linking to the Target URL.
What Pages Can We not justify linking to?
non-English speaking pages
We don't have any non-English speaking publishers. If you were a publisher, how would you perceive a link to a foreign speaking page from contributed content? Would it confuse you?
Account Login Pages
Unless our contributed content is titled, "5 Account Login Pages That Will Blow Your Mind", we're not going to be able to justify linking to this kind of page.
Contact Us Pages
A typical contact us page doesn't have any valuable information that would be beneficial to a user that is reading a non-promotional blog post.
Search Pages
This includes pages that are focused on finding a dealer in your network, search our site, etc.
What should you do?
Select pages that have helpful images, videos, quotes, claims, or statistics.
It doesn't need to be a full-blown case study, it just needs to have some information besides who the company is, what they do, and where they're located. Your page needs to have some content answering WHY this product or service is helpful.
Modify your target pages to include information an author can use as a resource.
What problem is the product or service fixing? Why is it a problem? Give some statistics and claims.
Use plenty of images that we could use within our blogging as an image credit.
The more information about more than just the company, the better.