What to call it?

Link Library? Links? Hmmm...

[Chevy]

OK, I ran across a site tonight that had a very nice little link exchange happening.

You know I could use the PR, and free advertising is neato, too.

It seems to me that I have been shying away from a page dedicated to reciprocal linking because none of my competitors have one. Ergo, I thought it just wasn't professional. Well, Google likes me better than most of them, so I guess I should be following my own instincts.

So what do I call this page (what text do I use for the link to links.htm)?

Something original and hip and professional.

[paynt]

Hi Chevy and Welcome to Webmasterworld and especially the linking forum. It’s funny we haven’t talked about this for a bit and so I’m glad you brought it up. What do we call links? [webmasterworld.com] is the last discussion I started on the subject, nearly 2 years ago.

It’s really funny to look back at that now and how serious we were in the importance of what to call the link page, in the relation to what we perceived the importance would be for optimizing for Google. Now I press to use the terms ‘link’, ‘resource’, ‘submission’ just to get to the people looking for one of my linking areas. It's time to get some new links! Here's a nice way I came up with... [webmasterworld.com] is an example of just why.

I like your approach now Chevy, very good. Let’s put more fun into it then and not take it as seriously as we did then.

So, I saw someone use ‘concierge services’ and I can hardly wait to use that.

[lorax]

>> concierge services

LOL. I like the sounds of that - images of a massage, fine single malt, and a cigar dance in my head.

My only fear with using a name that's not obvious is that I might lose the visitor. I tend to err on the conservative side for naming such a page.

[ScottM]

How about "Further Resources"?

[toolkit]

I find a word like 'Resources' works well as it gives the impression of something useful to the visitor.

[lorax]

Further Resources or just Resources work for me. I've also seen "Additional Resources". I've thought about using verbs like read, learn, visit in the title but confess I haven't taken the time to work out the title.

[Liane]

Good question! I've often wondered about this myself.

I didn't really want to use the word "links" in the anchor text because at the time, I thought links pages were perceived by users as just a useless page they could care less about. (Still unsure about this)

I wanted to set up two links pages. One for regional info to compliment my site and one for industry related links which have a more general appeal for my client base.

I split the difference and used:

"Favourite BVI services for sailors and landlubbers" as the anchor text and the url is www.mysite.com/bvi-links.html.

"Yachting information and boating related topics" as the anchor text and the url is www.mysite.com/yachting-information.html.

I think it is important not to mislead your user by mislabeling a links page. Some people get really annoyed when lead to a links page they thought would provide the info they assumed would be contained within your site.

"Yachting Information" and "BVI links" are obscure keyword combinations which surprisingly bring "some" traffic to the site ... although it wasn't planned to do so. :)

[excell]

Good mileage can be gained by using your topics main keyphrases in the links page link text and titles. All the links should be related to your site theme so links pages are great to add extra content that is totally relevant for your visitors. The links themselves (title & description) can be optimised to tie your site and the site you are linking out to together.

(as far as do folks use links pages? I have seen that they most certainly do... a good source of traffic flow between sites if done with the visitor's interests in mind)