I was poking around a shopping web site this morning for a project I’m working on. What I was looking for was a few quick links for some store items to include in a post.
Unfortunately after I searched for each item, the URL in the address bar ended in a nondescript “search.html”.
The site was using some kind of behind the scenes scripting to produce their results rather than just taking you to the page with the goods.
I found a work around, though. I put the items into a wish list, then emailed it to myself. There in the email were some pretty links with URL’s direct to the items.
Why Make Linking So Hard?
I’m not a super genius or anything. But I’m thinking that one of the things any of us want with our business web sites, whether they are blogs or traditional static sites, is for people to give us inbound links.
We’ll get more links if we make it easy. One way to do that is to make sure that the part of the web site we want to link to has a visible URL in the address bar.
It is always frustrating when I see something I want to tell someone about by shooting them a quick email with a link and can’t.
Too often what I want to link to is in a flash web site or some other scripted deal like the shopping site this morning and I’ll have to pass a long a whole set of instructions for the person on the other end of the email to get them to the interesting stuff.
Click on this button. Then when the next page loads scroll down and look here. Click on the part that says blah, blah, blah.
Depending on how hard it is to explain, I may not bother.
I don’t even like web sites that have a “Permalink” button rather than just displaying the URL straight into the address bar. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve copied the wrong link from the address bar for something rather than getting it from the permalink link.
If we want to encourage traffic to our business web sites (and blogs) we should make it as easy as possible for folks to link.
Use scripts and flash code responsibly!
Hmm, I think I might be able to explain this phenomenon to some extent, Chris … the reason is called: Security
The creators or owners of said website(s) have probably experienced attacks/hacking attempts on their websites … and once bitten …
So, they create their websites as securely as possible. And one way to secure them, is to have as much as possible happen behind the scenes in a bunch of hidden and protected code.
It certainly does not make linking easy, that is certain, but I believe that those folks had to make a decision at some point in time to favor linking vs. security. And they seem to have gone the security route.
It’s a toughy and I can relate to both sides of the argument.
Olli
That makes sense Ollie. And I see your point about having to find the right balance between security and accessibility.
I guess the high security approach makes more sense for bigger companies that have a large marketing budget to tap into to help with traffic generation.
However most of us small business types want to squeeze as much return as possible out from our marketing dollars. For my money I’ll be hanging out in the accessible area!
Linking should be easy. I’ve certainly found that any time we make things difficult for people, they simply won’t use it. Since we all want and depend on linking, you would think this would be one of those ‘no-brainers.’
That’s my school of thought, Dawud. I wonder sometimes if business owners get “sold” snazzy flash sites and then wonder why they don’t see much traffic. (Only to get “sold” SEO help…)
Oh, I know that happens. I’ve had to rebuild some of those sites.
I believe it! I’ve had different friends ask me what I thought of their web sites.
“Well. It’s pretty…
By the same token it also goes for security concerns with respect to possible malicious code. Accordingly, I ALWAYS visually check the link first before clicking and if I catch wind of any surreptitious code I won’t go there.
So stop mucking around with those links!
…BB
Good point, Bloke. In this age of phishing and other nastiness it is a good idea to pay attention to where that link is redirecting us to. Especially if we are in a shopping mode, ready to enter our credit card info!
Chris good point, I too pay close attention to where the site is redirected to, i hate the stupid links that you think you are going to the site and it directs you to some other crap, then before you know it you have lost or forgotten what it was you where supposed to be linking to!
Madison, I agree redirects are the worst. I know there is a very good place for them. But unfortunately everything good and useful seems to have a malicious, nasty use as well.