Do "Link to us" Pages Work?

[s2kinteg916]

Im thinking of creating a whole page on ways to link to the website since its a pretty useful resource.

I know for more commercial sites or general sites link to us usually doesnt work to well but i provide information that no one can get elsewhere similiar to wikipedia in a sense...

[Chris]

It can't hurt.

[KLB]

I have a link to us comment at the top of the right hand menu of every single one of my pages on my chemistry site. This comment links to a spot at the bottom of the same page where I have provided some easy to copy linking code. As Chris said, it can't hurt and you would be surprised just how many free links you can get this way. I use a bit of PHP code to automatically generate the appropriate linking text as a page is generated.

[cameron]

I think it would be helpful for non-webmasters. People could use it link to you from their various social networking profiles.

[Selkirk]

I like your implementation of this, Ken.

Along the same lines, what do you think of the "tell a friend" email scripts?

[KLB]

Selkirk anything that isn't too intrusive and helps encourage people to tell others about your site can't hurt. I didn't implement a tell a friend email script on my site because I was afraid it might get abused by spammers, but I know it is a common feature on sites.

[KLB]

For people with educational related sites (like my chemistry site) I'd recommend adding a "how to cite this page" comment at the end of each page. This is a great way to get students to properly site your web pages in their reports. This in turn can help promote your site via the footnotes of people's reports and papers.

[Kyle]

This is huge for humor sites, that archive the standard humorous movies, pictures, flash animations, and games you see everywhere else.

For these sites, phrasing the link to us as "Link to this page from your MySpace or [whatever]" works very well.

Ken is right on though regarding educational sites, and making it crystal clear on how people (students) should cite you as a source.

[s2kinteg916]

So a general link to the website is probally useless and better used on the content pages ?

[Kyle]

Do both, depends on the site and the pages you put it on.
It's hard to be so general about these things.

[Chris]

Lots of people too think they need permission to link to a site, or work for organizations that require employees to get permission before linking out. A general "link to us" page circumvents their need to contact you.

[KLB]

As Kyle says, suggest both general and page specific links. One should also make sure that the URLs for pages remain stable so that they can be directly linked to.