Managing External Links

It’s no secret that the longer you keep a person on your site, the more of an emotional
relationship you can develop between what your site represents and that
individual.
This is true of all types of Web sites, including Weblogs, commerce sites, and
portals. Commerce sites are especially concerned with this issue, because while
youll visit your favorite Weblog to enjoy the content, you might never be back to
the “Baby Stuff Web site again, yet you can be sure they hope youll be buying
your friends baby shower gifts there.
So, managing external links becomes very important in those situations where
keeping a person on the site up through the desired outcome of their visit is
mission-critical.
Typically, this means avoiding any external links in content close to the top of the
page. Keep links short and relevant. You can even write the surrounding content
of links in such a way to make them more—or less—attractive for your visitors to
follow. Heres an example of a link  I d probably follow:

Finding the popular and controversial ``Heya Charlie Brown'' movie
hasn't been easy. But I've found the <a
href=''http://thatsite.com/heyacb.mov''>last link on earth</a> for
the upbeat little flick. Get it now!

That Heya Charlie Brown thing really got <a
href=''http://thatsite.com/heyacb.mov''>out of hand</a>.
In the preceding figure, its not only the lack of enthusiasm in the voice of the
content, but also the placement of the link. Had it been placed around “Heya
Charlie Brown,it would likely be more noticeable.