Using Tools to Discover Links

One of the interesting things about linking is that you can  learn a lot about your site and visitors by tracing back links to where they cam from in the first place. For instance, at mandyf.wordpress.com, an experiment in linking to several key terms that sare unrelated like “dating”, “amputation”, “edema, and “disgusting eggs” returned a slew of information that was never expected.

By using one of those handy programs that allows me see who has been linking to me, there was a wealth of information to be culled by seeing not only who was reading the content, but who liked it enough to link to it. They programs are readily available all over the web, and are very simple to install. If you use Google Webmaster or Bing Webmaster tools, you will have easy access to them from that site.

In one case, a lot of links came in regarding out of the ordinary amputations? Whoa! I hadn’t thought of that. While many people likely have little interest in the amputations conducted in a hospital setting, quite a few people found a small section regarding amputations that were linked to accidents and how to treat them at the point of the accident.

Maybe I need to add a keyword phrase to my list. I don’t want to add the single word ‘strange’ (too confusing when mixed with the medical terms) – but what about the combination ‘amputee treatment’ or ‘treating lost limb’?

People who go looking for information regarding medical procedures and conditions that are not the norm are also the kind of people that will tend to bookmark, share, and/or link back to anything they find which really reaches out and grabs them in a manner other content is not.

Google’s Tool is my personal favorite because it tells you what the most commonly used words are being used in the anchor text of these inbound links. Silly me. I never thought of using the word ‘terrible accidents” to describe situations that have lead to some of the people in cases I examined requiring an amputation.

But there ’terrible accidents’ is, in anchor text originating from several medical sites devoted to exploring emergency treatment of patients at the scene of an accident. How would it work out if I tried something like “horrible accidents” or even “accident emergency care”?

By keeping an eye on your inbound links, which is a good idea in any case, you can see who is linking to you in case you end up with some links that would be better no-followed. It also allows  you to see if any reciprocal agreements are being honored. (Sorry guys, some people are unscrupulous enough to trade link postings and then renege. Don’t be surprised by that! It happens often enough to be worth monitoring.

Remember that how someone links to you is almost as important as the fact that they link to you at all. You just want to keep an eye on where those links are and how they are being used.