Blogging is about sharing information. As an information sharer, you have an opportunity to link to other information from each of your blog posts. This is not only a good thing for your readers, but the search engines like it too. It can be the critical difference in getting your content noticed.
If you are posting a typical article of about 250-300 words, you should be including at least 2-3 links, but not more than 4-5. Links can and should lead to one of three places:
- Your Home page;
- Another post on your site;
- Another site altogether (but make sure it is relevant).
I have a quick video that will show you how to add a link in your Wordpress blog.
Don’t go crazy with your links; just a couple for each post, and remember that linking to an outside site is a good thing. Just make sure the new link opens in a new window, and that the target site is relevant to your content.
Here’s how I create links in my blog:
- Open two tabs in your browser, one for the blog editing window, and one for the ‘public’ side of your blog;
- Write your article and get it ready to publish in the editing window. Before publishing…
- Find a keyword in your new post that you want to link, highlight and copy it;
- Now, Go to the public blog site (in your other tab) and perform a ‘Search’ for your keyword;
- You should get a couple articles from your blog in the search results. Select from the list of resulting articles and click the headline;
- Copy the URL from the browser window and move back to your editing window;
- With your keyword still highlighted, click the ‘link’ icon at the top of your editing window and past in the URL;
- Complete the process by identifying a ‘Target’ (open in Same if on your site, open in New if another), and add a Title. Don’t worry about ‘Class’ right now;
- Hit ’save’, and treat yourself to a donut. Don’t forget to post your new blog article before you head out.
