Ask any motivational guru for the top-ten keys to success and goal setting is almost certain to appear among the first three. Exactly what is goal setting?  To steal some definitions from most standard motivational textbooks, having an idea is a dream, writing it down is a plan, writing it down and specifying a date by which it will be achieved is setting a goal.

What would you like to accomplish with your links pages?  Have you ever sat down with a pencil or keyboard and brainstormed your linking strategy from every point of view?  How it serves your site visitors, how it benefits you, how well it works for your link partners, whether or not it enhances the look and flow of your site and how much value you get per hour of time invested in maintaining it all should be considered.  At first glance, these all seem like simple questions and they can, indeed, be answered quickly and easily with one-sentence statements:  I know my links page benefits me because my sales have gone up since I implemented it.

Fair enough, but not far enough. Because if you really analyze that question - how your links benefit you - you'll quickly realize that it's not simple at all.  It has many facets, each of which, when properly polished, can increase your site's performance to make the sum truly greater than the parts.  Here are just a few of the things you may want to think about in relation to how your existing linking strategy benefits you.

1. Do your links generate a substantial number of unique visitors from sites relevant to your own site?
2. Do your links tend to add "stickiness" to your site - will your link partners' content motivate people to return to your site?
3. Do your links encourage people to spend more time on your site?  It is well known that the longer people stay with a site the more likely they are to shop there or patronize your advertisers.
4. Is your anchor text as good as it can be?  The best, most informative links offer little value to visitors if the anchor text doesn't adequately describe them.
5. Do your links help resolve visitors' unasked questions?  In other words, do they anticipate what a potential customer's questions might be before that customer is aware of them?  In a sense the answer to this question is directly related to the answer to question four since it largely involves anchor text.

What is an unasked question?  Here's a personal experience.  Several months ago I considered buying a new car.  I went out and kicked a few tires and decided that some vehicle or other (I really don't remember what model) might be a good choice. Fortunately, my current car needed to have its air conditioning repaired and I decided to leave it in the shop a few days while I bought a new compressor on eBay (the difference in price, $625 locally vs. 79.95 plus $10 shipping on eBay made that a no-brainer.)  To fill in the transportation gap, I rented the same model car I was thinking of buying.  And I discovered the answer to a question I never would have asked at the car lot. Question: Does the car have an exterior passenger-door lock? Answer: No!  Now that's what I call a classic unasked question.  Because I never dreamed any carmaker - not even in Detroit's most arrogant years when Chevy was charging extra to put a rear seat in some models -- would try to scam a seven-cent saving on a $25,000 vehicle by deleting the passenger-side door lock, I never would have thought of that question.  And because I never would have thought of it, I came frighteningly close to paying $350 or $300 a month for five long years of being enraged every time I tried to put a bag of groceries on my "new" car's passenger seat.

OK, that's an extreme example of an answered question.  But it does illustrate the point.  Many people visiting websites are seeking information but aren't sure exactly what they want - or, in the case of me and the door lock -- need -- to know.  That's why FAQ pages are so popular and useful.  They answer questions - questions that viewers may have already thought of and questions that may not have occurred to them yet.  In structuring your links pages to give customers information they'll truly appreciate, it helps to think of an information link as the answer to a FAQ question and the anchor text as the FAQ question.

Since we're on the subject of cars anyway, let's assume that your business consists of e-tailing sports car accessories.  You've got great products at better-than-retail prices except that in many cases the expense of paying a local mechanic to install the accessories drives the end-users' total cost higher than if they bought the parts locally and got free installation.  Therefore, you would like to make your site visitors more comfortable with the thought of doing their own installations.  An obvious way to do this would be to provide links to sites featuring step-by-step car- customizing tips - let's say one of these sites is named customcar.info.  Since customrcar.info is in the business of selling books, calendars and other custom car-related soft goods and you're in the business of selling automobile accessories the two sites are very compatible and a reciprocal link would obviously benefit both.  So you open your LinksManager account and you use the QuickAdd tool to add the customcar.info link to your website in a matter of seconds .  You then send the customercar.info webmaster a simple link request.  The webmaster appreciates the relevant link and approves your link request in short order.

Descriptive anchor text tells potential customers that a specific link may help them find the answer to a crucial question..

Now you have two choices, you can use generic anchor text or anchor text designed to optimize the link's contribution on your site. A generic description might read something like "world's largest collection of sports car books, calendars and other materials." Compare that to "simple guides for do-it-your installation of sports car accessories, custom car books, and other materials for car buffs."  Why is the second fragment of descriptive anchor text better than the first?  Because it tells potential customers that this link may help them find the answer to a crucial question:  Can I install this myself?

As you may have already discovered, LinksManager is an incredible tool for gathering, organizing, formatting and publishing links and links pages. Because it takes the drudgery and requirement for a degree in rocket science out of the mechanics of creating and maintaining a dynamic link-exchange program, it leaves you more time to focus on linking strategy that is based on your editorial discretion - you decide who you link to, not some automated script.  More time to sit back and contemplate what you want your links to accomplish, and how to best optimize them to achieve the objective of providing the best end user experience for your site and its links pages.

Once you've decided what, if any, changes you want to make on your links pages, write them down and give yourself a deadline for implementing them.  Setting a goal to fine-tune your link program to become as good as it can possibly be, will produce measurable benefits for both you and your link partners.

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