It may be impossible to over-emphasize the importance of links to the fiscal health of any web-based business or Internet marketing strategy. Links are like the capillaries connecting a website to the Internet, carrying the life-blood of e-commerce. To appreciate the importance of links, it is helpful to begin with a basic understanding of exactly how links function. In the simplest definition possible, links are the Internet tools that allow users pretty much anywhere to access resources on a computer someplace else. Of course, there are a wide variety of resources to which a link can connect, most of which contain some kind of data.

Data resources can comprise a wide variety of programs and files from a wide range of media, and these data files make up pretty much the entire landscape of the World Wide Web, for they represent what users interpret as the face of the Internet – web pages. Those web pages result from data resources streaming to a computer via the connections of the Internet. Data resources can be stored in a variety of ways on computers hosting web sites, but the most important thing is that the data is immediately available to a web browser that seeks it. That is where the ever-important link comes in. Links interconnect all those millions of web pages into a communications network, providing a means whereby individuals are able to tap into the resources they are looking for, often searching for.

So the key to exchanging the proper kind of data with potential customers or even the random web browser is all in the system of links one settles on. Since it’s inception as a world-wide social phenomenon, the Internet has relied on the fact that it is user-friendly for its extensive popularity. And the Internet continues to become ever more user friendly. In short, to use the Internet, one does not have to be particularly tech-savvy, and this means that users tend to click on links that offer immediate results, a way for them quickly and logically bounce around in cyberspace.

Anyone who wants to enjoy the full benefits of the Internet is likely going to rely on links to navigate their way to the sites that are related to their interests. The placement of links is a key to attracting traffic, but that also leads to one of the most common pitfalls associated with links – bad links that go either nowhere at all, or take a user someplace that they did not really want to visit. Once a customer clicks on a link on your site that takes them to the wrong place in the cyber world, that customer may never come back again. To keep people coming back, make sure you freshen up your links.