Tourism Internet Marketing U

Outbound Links and Your Tourism Web Site

As we mentioned in earlier posts, the more inbound links you have to your site, from good quality related sites, the better chance you have of getting to visit your site and get a higher search engine reanking. However, most sites will link to you only if you agree to provide a reciprocal link back to their site.

Not such a big deal, right? Well, having outbound links on your site gives your visitors the opportunity to leave your site with the click of a button. Don’t worry, there are ways to keep your visitors on your site for as long as you can even while offering outbound links.

First of all make sure you place outbound links two or three layers down in your site. Never place outbound links on your home page. You want your visitors to come into your site and see and do everything you want them to before they have the opportunity to go elsewhere.

There are two ways you can provide outbound links. The first is by providing a hypertext link, which transports the visitor from your site to someone else’s with a single click. The second and preferred method is to have each outbound link open a new browser window when clicked. This way your visitors get to see the referred Web site, but when they are finished and close that window, the original browser window with your Web site is still active. The browser window with your site should still be visible on the task bar during their visit to the referred site.

Regularly test all of the links from your site to ensure that they are “live” and are going to the intended locations. Dead links reflect poorly on your site even if they are out of your control.

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-written by Susan Sweeney, CA, CSP, HoF