The Importance of Links
 by: Janice Byer, CCVA, MVA

Link: {(noun) - lin[ng]k} 1 : a connecting structure: 2 : something analogous to a link of chain: as a : a connecting element or factor b : a unit in a communication system c : an identifier attached to an element (as an index term) in a system in order to indicate or permit connection with other similarly identified elements (as defined by Merriam-Webster Online - www.m-w.com)

LINK… it is a small, sometimes insignificant word that just doesn’t seem to get the credit it deserves. After all, links are in and can affect almost every aspect of our lives but we hardly think about the impact that links have.

In the world of business, links can play a significant role in finding & sharing information as well as gaining valuable leads to help build our client and contact lists.

If you have a website; have been involved in the decision making for the design of a website; or design websites as part of your service offering, you have heard of the benefits of exchanging links with other businesses that compliment yours and can help to bring more visitors to your website.

A properly orchestrated, legitimate and well organized link exchange program can be the key to not only getting your name in infinite places on the Internet, it can also make or break your goal of high placement in the top level search engines.

The opposite holds true if you fail to exchange links at all or if you decide to put into place a ‘padded’ link exchange program. Don’t just link your website to or from just any old website on the Internet. The exchange needs to be significant and hold meaning for your site and your business. The links need to be legitimate exchanges of related or beneficial information. Having a link program that is simply a means of padding your list is viewed as non-beneficial by many search engines and thus your placement ranking will fall.

Your Favorites or Bookmarks list in your browser is another example of links that small business professionals can’t do without. We spend an enormous amount of time on the Internet viewing websites that can be beneficial when running our businesses and our lives. We tend to keep those site addresses saved in our browsers for later reference.

When you add links to your Favorites list you are adding to your resources. Can you imagine how many hours in a day you would waste searching for information on the Internet if you didn’t already have the links in a readily available location? Having all those resources available in one place is great, isn’t it? And, if you keep them organized and up to date, your list of links becomes one of your best steps to keeping your day and your business structured.

I recently decided that I needed to get my Favorites in order. Sure, I had lots of them but I couldn’t remember where to find them when I needed them. I was probably in a rush when I saved the link and either saved the link in the wrong folder or there wasn’t an appropriate folder to add it to so I just put it in the best available folder that I had. It was very disorganized and drove me crazy every time I tried to find a link I just knew I had.

About the same time I came to the realization that Docu-Type is celebrating it’s fifth anniversary this year and I wanted to do something special… a milestone, of sorts. I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been involved in the success of my business and I wanted it to be something that was important to me and hopefully important to others.

So, I decided that I would take on the task of organizing all the links that I have collected during the five years that I have been doing business on the Internet. I checked every single link I had to make sure it was titled in the most recognizable format and I also followed each link to be sure it was still active. If the link no longer worked or pointed to the wrong page, I tried to find the right page. I wasn’t always successful :-)

I then converted my Favorites list into an Ebook and that is how, Surfin’ The Net – Docu-Type’s Virtual Collection of Links was born. Of course there was some fine-tuning to be done which consisted of making the Ebook appealing to the eye, easy to navigate, and everything else that needs to be done to give it that “book feel”.

But, that still wasn’t enough. It needed more! So, I decided to include some of my articles that have been published in numerous online and print publications. And, as an added bonus, I included some inspirational quotes to add some motivation.

Links are an important part of our lives and I know I would be lost without my Favorites list. Now I can actually find the links that can help me as they are all in categories and easy to find in the Table of Contents. And I want to share this great list with everyone else.

To find out more about Surfin’ The Net – Docu-Type’s Virtual Collection of Links, please visit www.docutype.net/SurfinTheNet/linksebook.htm . This book, and everything it contains and represents, is a must for EVERY small business professional.