Blogging Tip: Links in Posts are Better than Sidebar Links

… especially if they’re bolded.

Here are some quick reasons why I think links are better in posts:

  • Show up in WordPress’s Dashboard - When I kicked off my new Free Marketing Ideas Blog, I realized that links in posts show up quickly in the Dashboard. And because I’d like to garner some attention and get some more inbound links, I made sure and gave some “link love” in a post. It’s one way to get some attention by WordPress bloggers in particular. I usually watch mine closely.
  • Google appreciates them more - I’m judging this by the News Alerts I have set up. It’s interesting to me to see how fast the keywords I’m watching show up in my inbox (through the News Alerts I’ve set).
  • People click on them more - They just do. Are we getting blind to the “blogroll” in the sidebar yet? How often do you click my sidebar links?
  • You can explain the link better - And those words matter to the search engines relevancy ranking, I think.

One good example of all this is Daniel’s Daily Blog Tips. Instead of having a blogroll link category he does it through a “blogroll” posts category. Each Friday he reviews and profiles a new blog. That’s his blogroll. Great idea, Daniel!

By the way, be sure to include keywords instead of just the standard “click here.”

All this is a big huge argument for why I’m thinking about taking my link list (blogroll) off the home page and into a standard Page post and cleaning up my home page a little.

What do you think about that? Ideas?

See a handy list of all the Blogging Tips at CCP here.

January 8, 2007 · Filed Under Blogging Tips

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3 Responses to “Blogging Tip: Links in Posts are Better than Sidebar Links”

  1. Josh on January 8th, 2007 10:17 am

    Yeah, I’ve gotta be honest: I almost never look at the side bar. In fact, I’m looking at it now and realizing how useful it would have been if I had paid attention sooner! Ha!

  2. Kevin Stilley on January 8th, 2007 1:25 pm

    I recently had this made clear to me via a quirk of circumstance. I am in the process of updating my Annotated Bookmarks and simply copied my sidebar and posted it in a post to an old junk blog that I keep around for no real reason. This way I could back them up to be reinserted later. People who had never once ever showed up at my Annotated Bookmarks blog showed up in droves to my junk blog.

  3. Cory Miller on January 8th, 2007 4:54 pm

    Kevin, actually … your blog is the one that helped me recognize this and investigate it further.

    You posted a link to me in a post recently and it showed up in my Dashboard and other ways. :-)

    So … thanks!

    Josh, I’m the same way … unless I’m hunting for more resources on a topic … I ignore the sidebar usually.

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