Effective Wording for Your Backlinks

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Links are a critical and extremely regular part of your content and your business. You want your readers to click on them so that they can understand more clearly what you do and what you offer. Link wording must entice.

It seems as though using the word “click” on your links is not effective, as you once might have thought that it would be. It is important to understand the perspective of the reader in this case. If you put “click” on your links, you will probably be distracting the reader from what you really want them to concentrate on. Pretty much everyone who would be looking at your content has an understanding of what a link is and what happens if they click on it. They don’t need to be distracted by the words themselves. Your goal is to get them to focus on what you are sharing with them. In fact, writing “click” on the link might even be viewed by them as condescending. It is a good idea to come up with alternative words that will definitely have a more positive effect on your readers. You still want them to “do” something; however, you need to appeal to them in a more discreet manner.

Using the most effective phrasing possible

The language that you use on your links often says a great deal about whom you are and what your business is all about. You need to get the most impact from the language that you choose. None of the language should be used haphazardly. It is best to concentrate on solid nouns when choosing the language to use on your links. The reason for this is that your readers will relate to solid nouns on a very basic level and therefore, they will understand exactly what you and your business are all about from the beginning. Nouns, as a part of speech, are easy for people to relate to. On the other hand, if you use verbs, you are introducing a vagueness that won’t generally have a positive effect on your audience and may, in fact, stand in the way of your accomplishing your goals of getting your readers to click on your links.

Have links that lead to specific things

Whenever you have a link in your content, it should lead to something very specific when your reader clicks on it. There should be a strong connection from the words in the link to the actual information that you want them to see. The wording in the link will leave little doubt about what you are trying to share with your readers if you do it properly. That way, they know exactly what they are getting into and exactly what they can expect. Surprises are not good in a situation like that.

Where to place the link in your content

When you are deciding where to place your links in the sentence, it is most advantageous for you to put them at the end of the sentences. If you do that, the links will be very easy to see as they are heading toward the end of the sentence. It is a lot more straight forward than having to revisit the content to search for the links that they noticed earlier on.

Conclusion

When it comes to content and the words that you choose to use to express what you have to say, the words may require some thought and consideration. It is important for you to think about the reaction to the words for the reader’s perspective, which will ultimately make it easier for you to choose the most effective language. Remember that the wording of the backlink should be totally appropriate for what you want your readers to click on and for the topic that you are discussing. With so much information on the Web and so many people wanting readers to link to their websites, the language that you choose for your links must be compelling and extremely magnetic.

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Author

  • Carolyn Cohn

    Carolyn Cohn is the Co-Founder & Chief Creative Services of CompuKol Communications. Carolyn manages CompuKol’s creative and editorial department, which consists of writers and editors. Her weekly blogs are syndicated globally. She has decades of editorial experience in online editing, and editing books, journal articles, abstracts, and promotional and educational materials. Carolyn earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.

5 Responses

  1. Beverly Richards says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Small Biz Nation

    Discussion: Effective Wording for Your Backlinks

    I encourage my website customers to utilize backlink drectories. Unlike the Google ranking system, rankings on Bing/Yahoo are definitely impacted by the number of backlinks. The average consumer does not go to a small directory to "find your business" but the directories love them. So we do too! 🙂
    Posted by Beverly Richards

     

  2. Reg NBS SEO says:

    Hi Carolyn, great article. I would also recommend using the default visual hints of links being in blue and underlined. I find it also helps to use anchor text that is directly related to the information on the landing page and include "for more information click here", as it acts as a call to action. Often  nouns need verbs to describe them. 

  3. Maureen Armstrong says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Freelance Editing Network

    Discussion: Effective Wording for Your Backlinks

    Sometimes the originality of the content is forgotten through any link that adds information otherwise misunderstood or not within the thought pattern/
    Posted by Maureen Armstrong

     

  4. Jonathon BigJohnG Gaug says:

    You are right Carolyn, Using the right wording for my linking has even earned my newsletters that I only send to my students to show up in Google searches.  I think AWeber helped though.  However, the premiss is sound, I know it works.  

  5. Chalam mani says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Music Industry Network

    Discussion: Effective Wording for Your Backlinks

    Thank you."Entice" is the word. "Hook" sounds appropriate too.:)
    Posted by Chalam mani