Internal linking is a good practice for SEO and as well as user interaction. Outbound links also carry the same value. The links help people to stay stuck within your site, returns value to them. For search engines, they show the semantic relation between the linked content and the original one. Benefits are numerous.
Enough said!
But are people actually clicking on the links in your posts? Are your links adding value to your readers and helping search engines to efficiently crawl your site? This is all this post is about.
Get more people click on your links
What kind of links get clicked? Is there a specific place we have to include links in? How to convince readers to click on that link? You work hard to carry out internal linking and create great content. Yet no one gives a damn to your linked articles.
What’s wrong with your linking strategy?
Here are the simple tips that help you get link clicks.
Where are the most-clicked links placed?
In some of my blog posts, I’ve included most of the links in the introduction part or above-the-fold part of the post. Those posts are offering me low bounce rates.
People tend to click on links that are placed early in the blog posts. When readers read your blog posts, half way through, chances of them clicking on your links will be less. Their attention span is less.
Make sure that the links placed early in the posts get opened in new tabs.
With this, you are ensuring that you are not forcing your readers to read the linked article skipping the current one.
Another advantage is that of SEO. Have you ever heard that links in navigation bar have more importance than that of in footer text? Google often offers high value of links that appear early on the page.
What anchor texts get better clicks?
When you hear the word “anchor text”, the very first thing that pops up in your mind is “keyword”. The days are gone. Although keyword in anchor text works, there’s no hard-fast rule like, “You should always have a keyword in your anchor text”. Readers tend to trust less on keyword rich anchor texts.
So.
In this section, longer anchor texts get more clicks.
The reason is this – longer anchor texts tell clearly to the readers what kind of content the link directs them to. They are long, so they get noticed, and they get clicks. Most of the online readers suffer from link-blindness. They tend to not identify links that are generic, short and not convincing.
Keep your link text convincing, relevant to the thing you are writing about. Links that are meant to support the something that you’ve stated tends to get more clicks.
What number of links is optimal to get clicks?
What number of links should I place in my post, in order to get more clicks? It’s a conventional conception that; more the links, more the clicky clicks. No! That’s not the truth.
It’s not the number that matters.
All that matters is value and relevancy.
The links should act as a portal for your readers to explore more about the topic. They should be relevant to the topic of your blog post.
Wearing the shoes of your readers, just go through your content. As a reader would you click on the links on your article? Do the links help you down the lane? If not, thrash them out!
You should not include too much of links in your single blog post. Make sure that links are not distracting your readers rather than helping them out.
Does link color matter?
Yes certainly.
As I said that readers suffer from a very common disorder called link-blindness. Most of them are blind to the most common color of the links i.e. deep-blue.
The only way to overcome is to make the links on your page unique in color. Try trying different colors for your links. You can achieve it with the help of CSS.
You may have noticed that in my blog, I have underline for links, as you may notice in the screenshot.
Whenever you hover above the link in my blog, you will get the dark underline.
It is to make sure that you do not read my blog posts, leaving links unnoticed.
Many of other blogs have the color of the links green, red and many others. Having links a different color than that of background, helps the links to stand out of the rest of text. It makes them attractive.
I personally advise you keep the color of the links darker to the background so that they stand out and get clicked.
Be simple yet HQ
Content that is written with simple language gets consumed by a wide range of audience. Make your content easily understandable by the readers. Ensure that the content delivers value to the readers and is of high-quality.
Your main goal here is to create content that is of high quality, and yet simple so that it is fully comprehensible by your readers.
Once, readers start to take the essence out of your content, they trust that you only link out to high-quality related stuff. They will be more eager to read and explore more your linked content. You get more readers clicking on the links you included in your content, in the hope to find something useful.
How to track whether my links are clicked?
If a particular post on your blog, have low bounce rate, then it is a clear indication that your internal linking strategy is that post is working great and users are actually clicking on your links.
Just head over to Google Analytics, and take a look at the bounce rate it’s as simple as that.
If you want to track a particular link then there’s a way to do it with the help of tags manager.
Another way is to make use of in-page analytics. It displays you the number of times the links are clicked on your posts. The simpler way to use this is to make use of Page Analytics extension by Google. This is the easiest way.
Finally.
In order to ensure that your hyperlinking efforts are bearing fruits for you, you should be able to determine why people are not clicking on your links. Increasing the chances of people clicking on your links, reduces your bounce rate and increases on-page user interaction, which in turn boosts SEO.
I hope the tips I outlined in this post helped you to make people click on your links. Don’t forget to share and drop a comment. Thank you.
The post How to Get More People to Click Links on Your Posts? appeared first on GoBloggingTips.