Link Pages are Dead - Long Live Content Pages.
Posted Friday, October 14th, 2005. Filed under Internet Marketing Tips, Link Building.
I was reading Rand Fishkin's SEOmoz blog about what a links page should look like, and it got me thinking: link pages are dead, and have been for a while. I'm guilty of creating thousands of these crappy pages in the past, most now gone.
A bad links page example has a URL and title tag literally containing the word "links," with a repetitive format of link text, a line break, a few words of generic description, then another link, over and over. I bet search engines hate these pages because it's so obvious what their intent is — any page following that exact formatting pattern can be filtered out easily, even if a few real pages get thrown out with the bathwater.
A better resource page instead reads like a genuine "7 outdoor tips" article, weaving relevant links naturally into real content — a link to a greenhouse supplier in a tip about greenhouses, a .gov PDF about soil in a tip about planting, a Harvard study in a tip about health benefits of gardening. That sprinkles in good co-citation with .gov's, .edu's, and expert sites.
The main idea: focusing on relevance and links within good content is much better than the old way of making dedicated "links" pages. Link pages are dead. Long live content pages with links embedded within.
Reader Comments
kservik: I have been thinking about the same issue for a while. I operate in Norway where link real estate of quality is really hard to come by, so I've ended up paying bloggers to write posts about the sites I need links for in an optimal, contextual way.
mkane: Great post. I believe it will take some time before enough people feel comfortable leaving familiar ground, since the old way has been working for so long. On my site I now give everybody the choice of how they want to link.
