Where Should You Put Important Links?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, December 28, 2008 Leave a comment

Eye tracking experts have figured out where people’s eyes naturally navigate to when they first land on a web page. Webmasters can use this information to their advantage in several ways. If you know that more eyeballs will see the top left corner of the page, for instance, then you’ll get more clicks on your ads if you put one in that location. The same principles hold true for links.

Let’s say you’ve built a web page that links to three other web pages on your website. Where do you place your links?

First, you should identify those parts of your web pages that are most viewed by the most people. Generally speaking, the top of the page is preferred because you’ll have more eyeballs “above the fold”. The reason for this is simple. No matter how well written your content is and no matter how well you do in building a great web page, there will always be people who land on the page then exit without taking any action or reading below the scroll point. That’s just the way it. But they will still see what you have above the fold at the top of the page.

You can use your bounce rate to your advantage. Place your most important links and ads at the top of the page where bouncers will still have their attention set. If your web page doesn’t provide them with what they are looking for then maybe one of your links will.

Aside from the top of the page, the section to the left of your web page just below your header is another hot spot for eyeballs. In that quadrant, typically where your first paragraph of content begins, or the sidebar right next to it, is a great place to put important links. If you draw a line diagonally from that point to the bottom right corner of the page, that’s where people’s eyeballs generally migrate to and those points along that line are usually the best places for your links.

What you need to think about is how people will scan your page because most readers will scan before they read. If your page is broken up into sections where you have three or four subheads on your page then the first paragraph of each of those subheads, the topmost ones most favorable, will be hotspots for eyeballs. Links in those paragraphs will generally do better.

When deciding where you want to put your most important links, think about where your visitors are most likely to focus their attention not only your search engine optimization strategy. That’s where your links need to be.

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