Wordpress
Links

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Tutorial Overview

Topics covered in this tutorial (click link to jump to topic):

1.	Why Bother?
2.	Well, How do I do it?
3.	Lesser Used Functions of the Links Panel
4.	Link Categories

Why Bother?

For one simple reason: if your site links out to quality resources on the web, search engines will reward your site with a higher place amongst the search results pages.

Told it was simple, but there is another reason too; you need a base on which to approach other people to link to your site. That is, you link to them first, contact them and as for a link back. Everybody wins. The link popularity of both sites is improved (providing they are not spam sites).

Well, How do I do it?

Head to the links panel on the left and click “Ad new”. Complete the top three boxes. The top one is the link label. This is what will appear on your site.

The next one is the link itself including the “http://” at the beginning. I suggest you cut and paste this from another browser tab or window.

And finally the description of the link. This information is handled differently depending on your theme. Some times the description will display on hovering the mouse pointer over the link on the homepage, or sometimes it will be written after the link on the homepage.

See this page for more detail: http://codex.wordpress.org/Links_Manager

Lesser Used Functions of the Links Panel

There are two features of the link panel that may be useful on your web site.

There is a panel called Link Relationship. This lets you specify what relationship the link your are recommending bears to your site. The most useful relationship here is probably “another web address of mine”.

In the Advanced area you can assign a little logo or picture to a link. This could add a little visual interest, but doesn’t serve a purpose for search engines.

Link Categories

Links can be grouped into “categories”. If you have a lot of links, you should consider sorting them into groups. On the Links panel, click on Links Categories. This is where you create new categories. Once you have three of four categories set up, you can return to you individual links and add them to their rightful category.

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