Reference Pages: How You Can Use Them to Attract Links and Traffic
One way of attracting visitors to your website is to create content or webpages that are entertaining or filled with valuable information. If you own a blog and have been publishing for some time, you’ll have more than enough material to use as traffic or link magnets.
You might not even need to develop new content. You could simply collect articles or media you’ve produced and situate them in a frame which appeals to a specific audience profile.
This just involves creating a new webpage that is targeted towards a sub-section of your market/audience. This web page includes a list of reference materials relevant to a specific audience and it should be prefaced with an introduction which elaborates its purpose or aim.
I recently came across the perfect example of such a reference page in the form of Google’s help section for non-profit groups. Let’s use this as a case study on how you can create your own reference pages and use them to attract traffic/links.
Take a look at the website and the first thing you’ll notice is how it was specifically created for a specific audience profile (non-profits).
None of the resources recommended by Google are new: they are simply tools or applications that have been available for a long time. But that doesn’t matter. What is important is how the page is angled for maximum relevance: it demonstrates how Google can be used to fulfill the goals of a functioning non profit organization.
All of the tools are centralized on one convenient page: your visitor will only need to share one link to her friend. This facilitates both link-based and word of mouth recommendations. When constructing your reference page, keep it all on one page.
Each Google application is then explained in greater detail on individual pages, all of which are connected to one another via the left sidebar. The user can easily click around to explore the rest of the recommended tools. Remember to guide visitors to other pages by interconnecting them via highly visible links.
After you’ve created a reference page, you can start to drive traffic to it. Make an announcement on your site, draft up a press release, submit it to social news websites, purchase advertising and send email pitches to bloggers and journalists.
A well-done reference page will be a valuable source of inbound citation links and traffic over time. People will bookmark it and recommend it to their friends. Bloggers will share it with their readers. It will rank well on the search engines.
By offering a opt-in newsletter targeted at the specific audience profile, you can also use it to build your email list. Try creating reference pages when you have a chance: they are easy to create and will offer a great returns on investment.
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Incredible post with some very sound ideas and reasoning behind these ideas. Thanks for the information!
Ha! I’ve been planning something very similar to this for the past few days and now you’ve solidified the idea for me. Thank you!
I buy that idea you have just made across and felt it could help me in some way boosting my product sales, will give it a try, thanks maki!
Love it! I noticed that page on Google recently, but hadn’t really given it the kind of thought you have, for all I’ve been meaning to put some of my best resources together on some of my sites.
I can’t believe was a simple, yet apparently effective idea this is. Usually, the best ideas _are_ simple. Thanks.
Hi,
I already heard about this tip and started my own few linked sites. They are all about wines and also about hotel, travel, wine and cooking podcasts.
But now, thanx to you, I will go on and write some more stuff like this.
Cheers,
Goetz
Great idea, a bit similiar to the Sneeze pages of Problogger. GMTA, heh?
http://www.problogger.net/arch.....your-blog/
That’s Great!
Incredibly simply and seemingly effective marketing strategy! Thanks Maki!
A very nice idea indeed. I will definitely try it later!
awesome article! Kind of the grey/whitelabel concept without the actual rebranding but still with a clear and differing target audience focus.
Really nice!
Yes indeed using a simple reference page is good enough as link bait. Actually, creating a page with “a list of 100 top sites for blah blah blah” (replace it with any relevant topic) and people will find it useful and bookmark you or mention about your site.
This is a great exercise for a well-crafted blog series as well. You can privide links and guidelines to your own content but also to other great sites. StumbleUpon eats these sorts of pages up.
I love this idea. Do you have to know html to create a page like this?
forgot to mention that this post was extremely well-written. very precise, concise and easy to understand. very nice!
cool post and solid info!
Thanks for that!
Lewis
thanks for the post. i hope to read some more.
Best regards from Sebbi
Thanks for the boost to get this done for myself. I need to write a reference page about my target area I work and just need to get it done!
I had been thinking of creating a landing page like this, but now it seems a subpage would be better. I could create several with a different emphasis, then promote them within each one’s appropriate niche.
Good find. I like how you see everything with a marketer’s eye.
It’s said that one sign of a creative mind is looking at the same thing and seeing what others cannot see. You’ve given a good example of that here with this suggestion. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at a Google page built for a specific audience (like the one you use as an example) and never connected with the idea of how it could serve a purpose for my blog readers. Thanks for the great “kick in the seat of the pants” (an odd creativity term I remember hearing years ago).
Loved this article. I was just thinking of a similar idea, and thought it was brilliant. Then your article came along and helped me fill in some parts I was unsure about, or hadn’t thought of. Thanks.
We have tried this on one of our sites and for the first few months we felt it was wasted effort. The last couple of weeks however we find that as simple as this page is it is slowly but steadily becoming one of our main entry pages.
At least i can hear someone who came and told us here that it is not working that well, thanks fro that information oneunder.
Good post doshdosh..Like to use this idea on my site too
interesting content i love it! i learn a lot of it!
cool tips n info!
Thanks for that!
This way of attracting visitors to our website is really appreciable. to create content or webpages that are entertaining or filled with valuable information will a help a lot to the visitors. Try this soon!
What a fantastic marketing strategy!
http://inspirationforch.stumbleupon.com/
Angled for maximum relevance, sure is!
I think this article is particularly helpful as a rule of thumb for bloggers to create useful and meaningful static pages. Solidifying and grouping content is possibly as important as website branding!
goot post.. it helpful indeed
Great Idea.
Love the site, BTW.
Very nice article, and very interesting. Thank you.
Great points! Thanks.
This is such a neat idea. Tie it in with a referer redirect and you can point traffic that comes from particular backlinks straight to your target page. I created a science education landing page for my student readers and have a rewrite for visitors who come from a big edu site that links to my homepage.
db
Thanks for the tips.
You are absolutely right.
We have been doing that for a couple of years, and have noticed a difference almost immediately in traffic and quality of visitors
Good advice
The hierarchy of content in the site is also imp.Building a tree structure of the content in the left side corner attracts many visitors.
Well, i think its very true your post mentioned about how to attract visitor to your website. Nice. Will post the same thing to let my visitors and readers know on this one.
Google is the Best…..They have changed the world of money to free….
Yes, google has Improved the Online Business ideas in all over the world, adsense has changed the system of advertisements.
most of peoples are using google adsense for better ROI from website.
Content is the king for your site, so get the quality content and you will get best traffics in search engines.
Google is God in Internet marketing.
thanks
Jay Paul
Yes, the importance of good reference page is paramount.
Fantastic tips on how to build links and attract traffic