by Mike Banks Valentine
Most webmasters are very aware of the value of having quality
links from relevant, on-topic links from well regarded, high traffic
web sites pointing to their own site. Professional webmasters
will always provide linking graphics, instructions and sample
text to those webmasters willing to link to them. The text you
use in your recommended linking instructions will very often be
cut and pasted without changes and this allows careful choice
in linking text to help build link relevancy.
What follows is a standard part of a serious linking campaign,
Instructions for setting up a "Link to us" page from your own
web site. If you wish to cut and paste from this article, be certain
to be aware of the added space inserted after each left facing
bracket. They were inserted to prevent the HTML code from disappearing
in HTML email readers such as those at AOL and other webmail programs.
There is a little trick to providing the HTML code for your visitors
to see on your page which requires some coding slight of
hand. Due to the nature of code, it is meant to be invisible and
making it show up as code on a web page requires the following:
Those < brackets >
that define HTML to a web browser make the contents within them
disappear, so you must use code that defines a bracket, rather
than using the bracket itself. That code is <
for < the left-facing bracket
and > for the >
right-facing bracket. So in order to make the HTML show up on
an HTML web page, you must use <
and > in place of all
of those brackets in order for them to show up on screen.
All of those brackets have been represented in green text on
the page to help you be able to make more sense of the code visually.
Choose "View" and then "Page Source"
from your browser menu. This will let you see the code
necessary to display code in a web browser.
I recommend using a background color in the area you've created
to display your HTML to separate it from the rest of the page.
Here's the code necessary to make a gray background, single-celled
table to display your linking code on a web page:
<table bgcolor="#CCCCCC"
width="371" border="0" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="2">
<tr>
<td>
<
Your linking code would go here
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Using "comment" tags to show the start and finish of
your links.
Comment tags are designed to allow you to create instructions or
comments in HTML that don't show up in a browser. A comment tag
is meant to be invisible too, so you will need to use those <
and > characters to make
THEM visible as well.
<!-- SearchEngineOptimism Link END -->
will show up in a browser as
<!-- SearchEngineOptimism Link END -->
and when copied from your web page and pasted into their web page
HTML by your visitor, they will become invisible code used
in their HTML source. The easiest link to provide is a text link
and it can be used in email as well as on a web page. Tbe following
is the text we provide at SearchEngineOptimism:
<table bgcolor="#CCCCCC"
width="371" border="0" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="2">
<tr>
<td>
<center>
<!-- SearchEngineOptimism
Text Link START -->
<A HREF="http://SearchEngineOptimism.com/"
TARGET="_top">
SearchEngineOptimism 101<a/>
offers an entertaining and easy Search Engine
optimization tutorial to increase your business VISIBLE on the web!<a/>
<!-- SearchEngineOptimism
Text Link END -->
</center>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
This appears on a web page as follows:
< !-- SearchEngineOptimism Text Link START -- >
<A HREF="http://SearchEngineOptimism.com/"
TARGET="_top">
SearchEngineOptimism<a/> offers an entertaining and
easy Search Engine
Optimization tutorial to increase your business VISIBILITY
on the web!<a/>
< !-- SearchEngineOptimism Text Link END -- >
|
Note the TARGET="top" in the code? This insures that
if your link is used in a framed site, that the resulting page
will break out of the frameset.
Displaying a banner or graphic for visitor cut and paste
Clearly this could get difficult showing much HTML code as text,
but let's look at how to show a graphic on your page as well.
It is a preferred method of linking for some site owners and should
be one or your options on a good linking campaign with allowances
for different banner sizes, shapes and colors to match differing
webmaster tastes and page layout preferences.
<table bgcolor="#CCCCCC"
width="499" border="1" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="475">
<!-- SearchEngineOptimism
Link START -->
<A HREF="http://www.SearchEngineOptimism.com/"
TARGET="_top">
<CENTER>
<BR><FONT
FACE="arial, helvetica" size="1">
</A>
<CENTER>
<IMG SRC="searchengineoptimism.gif"
width="468" height="60" alt="Wanna Be
Seen? Let SearchEngineOptimism show you how to gain visibility
for your business online!>
</center>
<A HREF="http://www.SearchEngineOptimism.com/"
TARGET="_top">
Search Engine tutorial about gaining visibility on the web!</a>
</FONT>
</CENTER>
<!-- SearchEngineOptimism
Link END -->
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
</table>
This appears as on YOUR web page as:
<!-- SearchEngineOptimism Link START -->
<CENTER>
<A HREF="http://www.SearchEngineOptimism.com/" TARGET="_top">
<FONT FACE="arial, helvetica" size="1">
<IMG SRC="searchengineoptimism.gif" width="468" height="60"
alt="Let SearchEngineOptimism show you how to gain visibility
for your business online!"> </A> <br>
<A HREF="http://www.SearchEngineOptimism.com/" TARGET="_top">
Search Engine Optimization tutorial about gaining visibility
online</a> </FONT> </CENTER>
<!-- SearchEngineOptimism Link END --> |
You must then provide a copy of any images you are offering as
linking graphics to download and save from your page.
<table width="499"
border="1" cellpadding="0" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<tr>
<td width="475">
<center>
<font size="3"
face="arial, helvetica">
<b>468X60
"Wanna Be Seen?" banner
</b>
</font>
<p>
<font size="3"
face="arial, helvetica">
<a href="http://searchengineoptimism.com/SEO_Tutorial/">
<img src="searchengineoptimism.gif"
width="468" height="60" alt="Search Engine
Optimization tutorial about gaining visibility online" border="0">
</a><br>
<a href="http://www.Searchengineoptimism.com/SEO_Tutorial/">
<font size="2">Search
Engine Optimization </font>
<font size="3"
face="arial, helvetica">
</font>
</a>
<font size="3"
face="arial, helvetica">
<a href="http://www.SearchEngineOptimism.com/">
<font size="2">Tutorial
</font>
</a>
about gaining visibility online
</font>
</center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
</table>
This appears on the page as the example below shows:
Provide instructions to the novice webmaster as to the selection
and saving of any graphic image when you provide logos, banners
or graphics to link to your site.
To save any of the images to your hard drive press
your right mouse button (Mac users hold down your mouse button
and a menu will pop up) click on the option to "save this image"
select a drive and/or directory on your computer and you've got
it! Then cut and paste to your page the appropriate HTML code
from below the image you choose.
The importance of setting up a linking page on your site can't
be underestimated when it comes to gaining that all-important
traffic to your site. It really is quite simple to do, no matter
how difficult it is to explain! ;-)
Good luck with your linking campaign!
The
Linking Matters Report
A free report to help website owners and publishers plan effective
linking strategies and boost link popularity - includes guidelines,
worksheets and links to over 50 articles on linking.
