The Problem With The Web OK, let's start with 4th grade webmaster basics. Yes, we know you already know this, but it is important that you keep it at the front of your mind as you read the information on this site. How The Web Works Not even the most ardent "Expert" or "Guru"can disagree with this. The web is simply a collection of millions of websites with information, products and services on any subject you can imagine. To make the web work users need to be able to get from one site to another site. How do they do that? By using LINKS. It doesn't matter where they come from... a search engine, an email or another site, LINKS are what bring you your visitors. SEO Is Killing Links We won't go into SEO too much here as we have pointed out the main issues with that on other pages on the left. You should read some of those, especially the SEO problems pages. We have agreed already that links move people between sites. We are assuming at this point that you already exchange links with other sites and are not paying for all your visitors. Now let us ask you a few questions: Is your links page or directory featured only from a tiny link at the bottom of your pages that looks like this Links? Worse, have you renamed that link "resources", "partners" or "directory" hoping your visitors won't find it? If you answered yes to either of those questions you are helping to KILL the web and depriving yourself of countless visitors. Hiding away your links does one thing which is bad for you and bad for web users. It FORCES them to use search engines. Search engines that YOU are not at the top of or you wouldn't still be here. Think about it. A surfer goes to Google, searches and visits a site. When they are finished at that site where do they go??? Back to the search engine. Why??? Because they saw no alternative. At this point let us clarify the one sure thing about every single visitor to your site..... THEY ARE ALL LEAVING! Webmasters just don't seem to get this. Now this may shock you, but at the very top right of every page of your site there is a little red X that will take visitors away from your site. At the top left of every page of your site there is a "Home" button that will take visitors away from your site. You can't change that unless you author IE or Firefox. While you can't change this, you CAN effect where they go. Now we would like to show you a very simplified diagram of the movements of most web users, because we as webmasters are not giving them choice as they leave. It is simple, but will give you the general idea. Does this look like a web to you? Or does it look like a star where the search engine has total control over the traffic you receive? Now another diagram, again very simplified, but this time the blue sites are those lucky enough to be on the first page of the search engines results, which remember, is 10 out of MILLIONS of sites for any search. The red sites are the sites that are not on the first page of results, which is most of them and probably yours. This is why you do not have all the visitors you should. If you are like most webmasters you are concentrating all your time on getting to the top of search engines, on competing with hundreds of thousands or even MILLIONS of other sites for those coveted 10 places. Consider this, at any one time there are millions of people at Yahoo, Google or MSN but we GUARANTEE you there are BILLIONS on other websites. What we as webmasters need to do is start moving traffic directly between our sites. Currently the main problem is this: People are linking for rankings instead of for traffic. Question: Do Google, Yahoo or MSN buy products from you? Do they join your mailing list or buy a membership from you?? NO THEY DON'T. Here's the first bit of common sense advice we have to give you, you NEED to get your links in front of PEOPLE, the beauty of this is that if people can find them so will search engines. There has been a lot of talk by the SEO experts about the "Value" of a link, PR this and PR that. We have one thing to say about PR, it stands for "Poor Results". The real value of a link is if it gets clicked by a PERSON. If a link brings you ONE free visitor a year it is of value to your business. The solution to this is simple, we all need to organize our link sections, pull them out from the bottom of our pages and stick them in the main navigation WHERE THEY USED TO BE before we all got wrapped up in SEO. We have already established that ALL VISITORS TO YOUR SITE LEAVE. Ask yourself this honestly, do you want to force them back to a multi million dollar search engine who gives you NOTHING for sending them that visitor, or would you rather send them to a webmaster like yourself who needs extra visitors and will send you free visitors in return?? Another FACT... if a web user likes your site, your product or service they will buy or they may bookmark and come back later. If they don't, they will go to another site. We can GUARANTEE you this. They will not click your "Links" button until they are ready to leave so stop being scared of it! One last diagram for you. This is what happens when web sites show CLEARLY that they have a links directory Again very simple, but think about this. If you had 300, 500, 1000, 2000, VISIBLE links on other sites in VISIBLE links directories, don't you think that would bring you good free traffic? Don't you think it would make your site easier for search engines to find and index too??? If you can already see the light, then start looking at the green buttons in the navigation on the left. If, like we used to be, you have been blinded by SEO and think it is the only way to go, then click a few red buttons in the navigation on the left and find out what the SEO people don't tell you, and why the search engines themselves don't like SEO.