Inter-linking Articles Strategy - What You Need To Know
By Emmanuel Mendonca, Fri Dec 9th

Webmasters have so much information available to them on theInternet about how to increase traffic to their web sites, buthow do you keep visitors on the site when they get there? If youhappen to use the articles format in order to provideinteresting content for your readers, have you considered whatthey do when they finish reading one of your articles?

Actions the reader will take, will include: navigating toanother part of the web site (if you are lucky and have a welldesigned site); typing another web site address into theirbrowser; and, closing down their browser and doing somethingelse – perhaps resuming their work after a lunch break. If youare a webmaster, the first of these would obviously be yourpreferred outcome. But a reader who randomly navigates throughyour pages at speed, is not the ideal. How do you not only keepa reader on your site, but also keep them engaged with yourarticles and possibly the products you are offering, while theyfinish the second half of their lunchtime sandwich?

The answer is very simple really, but many webmasters do not usethe strategy I am about to outline, when they place articles ontheir sites – the inter-linking strategy. What is it? It issimply the practice of linking one article on your web site toanother related article and clearly signaling the link to yourreader. People who write articles in different steps or partsuse it already e.g. at the end of “Tips on How to Save Money –Part 1” they will have a link to “Tips on How to Save Money –Part 2”. But there is no reason why we should not all be takingadvantage of this simple but very effective strategy.

For example, you may have written a general article about

Direct Deposit Problem Solved
Emailers send us messages all the time asking how to get direct deposit without good credit and without a banking account.
Prepaid Legal or Lexington Law to clean up credit?
The path of cleaning up disputes on your credit report can be along and windy one but Lexington Law services may be the answer.
CareOne may offer better debt help
Read our review of the CareOne credit counseling services which have been aired on various talk shows across America.
Are sub-prime lenders around in this market?
Find out more about subprime loans and what they mean for the security of your home. Including readers comments on the current crisis.
Bad Credit Card Game to Your Advantage
If you play the game right then credit cards can actually work to your "bad credit" advantage.

dentalfloss (ok so you have a really tough job on your hands ofkeeping your reader onboard!). In order to ensure that yourreader does not leave your site after reading the article, youcould include at the end of it a once sentence paragraph thatsays “If you have ever wondered how they get the mint flavourinto dental floss, click here for an article which explainsall”. This is a much more powerful strategy than just having along list of “other related articles” at the bottom of the page,which the reader may not even be able to see because they havenot scrolled down far enough. Another benefit of this strategyis that with some clever and imaginative wording in that lastone sentence paragraph, you can steer your reader towards aparticular page, again possibly with information about a productthat you wish to sell. As with all strategies, there is lots ofroom for experimentation to see what works best. As well asplaying with words to come up with a sentence that will igniteyour reader’s interest, you can try different formats for thetext itself. For example, if the last paragraph looks just likethe rest of the article, it will almost certainly be read andtaken in by the reader.

Implementing this inter-linking strategy may take a little moretime and thought, if you have previously only carpet-bombed yoursite with as many articles as possible. However, it isdefinitely another valuable tool for the webmaster’s toolbox, orweapon for his armory, depending on how fanatical you are aboutkeeping visitors on your site as long as possible!

About the author:Emmanuel Mendonca is the webmaster and publisher ofDebt Genius at www.debtgenius.com -a free source of information and advice on debt consolidation,getting out of debt and on saving money.