What do the links on your website or blog tell prospective clients and customers about the kind of person you are?
One of the reasons that Google has become the dominant player in the search engine market, is that so much of what it does, reflects the way humans think. If Google’s algorithm spots that your website is linking to what it calls a “bad neighborhood” it will penalise the site with a worse ranking in Google’s search results.
I wrote recently about link exchanges and how they can hurt your site’s reputation.
In exactly the same way, if a prospective client or customer visits your website / blog and sees that you are linking to something that they believe is dubious, you will drop in their regard. This can have a massive negative impact on their decision to contact you.
Just as our parents told us to be careful about the kids we hung around with when we were young, today, as businesspeople, we need to be careful not to associate our name and reputation with the wrong crowd. Many people see a link as an endorsement. After all, we certainly wouldn’t link from our site, to a site that we thought was dubious, right?
I think it’s a good idea from time to time, to review the people and companies we link to and the kind of message, which these links give to people when they visit our site.
If you were checking out a potential service provider, what kind of links would put you off?
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