Link to articles or sponsor?

1. 67

   Bill Manningposted 13 years ago

   Ding ding ding, it's time for another annoying website question from Bill
   
   I am making pages in one of my websites. They are about Disney resorts and hotels. I'm making four pages of them from budget ones up to luxury villas.
   
   I put a little summary of each resort, along with a picture of it. I then link the picture and text to,,,,,
   
   That's what I'm confused about. I have full articles of each resort in my site. So, I could make the links go to the articles, and then hopefully they click the link to the sponsor.
   
   However, I also could just link each link in those pages right to the sponsor, by-passing my articles. One less click they would have to make.
   
   But links to my internal articles is good for SEO. So what would you do, link to the articles or right to the sponsor?

   replyreport
2. 61

   paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

   If it was me…
   
   I’d plaster all 4 articles on the homepage with a link to the sponsor at the end of each article. When it comes to internet sales, nuanced subtly is not one of my virtues, except in my forum posts of course.

   replyreport
   1. 67

      Bill Manningposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for your advice. However each page has 4 to 8 different Disney resorts. So I really can't just paste them all on the home page.
      
      Did you know Disney has over 30 different hotels? Most going from 150.00 to over 500.00 per night. I prefer the 25 buck specials at motel 6.

      replyreport
3. 0

   Oceana Swiftposted 13 years ago

   I would have have the picture link to your internal page for its SEO and then link the text to sponsor. On summary pages of this type, I always split the difference. And on each individual page I always have a link back to the summary page.
   
   (I'm a Motel 6 girl myself.)

   replyreport
   1. 61

      paradigmsearchposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      If I knew you better, I would have some fun with that statement.

      replyreport
      1. 67

         Bill Manningposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         That's a really good idea, never thought of that. Yeah, I'll link the pic to my articles with the text saying to "go here to book a room today at bla bla bla,,," and link those to the sponsor page.
         
         Thanks!

         replyreport
4. 0

   Oceana Swiftposted 13 years ago

   Don't worry I'm not one of the 25 buck specials at Motel 6 that Bill enjoys.

   replyreport
   1. 67

      Bill Manningposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Hey, I was referring to the hotel cost, not anything else!

      replyreport
   2. 59

      Pandoras Boxposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      That sounded absolutely awful. Hah!

      replyreport
5. 69

   lrohnerposted 13 years ago

   The answer here really depends on whether you want the sponsor to see that you're giving them more traffic or higher conversion rates.
   
   I actually have run tests on this on a site that dealt with luxury vacation real estate -- some of it was Disney property, btw. Summaries that linked directly to the sponsor obviously gave the sponsor bigger traffic numbers. But summaries that linked to a full article that linked to the sponsor had less traffic but through-the-roof conversion rates.
   
   Since we were dealing directly with the properties or their media agencies, we were being judged on conversion rate rather than amount of traffic, hence the testing.
   
   Edited to add: I like Nelle's idea of splitting the difference.

   replyreport
   1. 67

      Bill Manningposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the advice. So you had better conversions when they read the full article huh? I'll keep that in mind.

      replyreport
      1. 69

         lrohnerposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Well, I don't know if reading the full article pushed the conversion rate, or if it was really only folks who were seriously interested (as opposed to casual surfers) who would take the time to click through to that point.

         replyreport
         1. 67

            Bill Manningposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Yeah that makes sense. Anyone who read the whole article must have really been interested in it. So if they clicked the link from the article they were more likely than others to buy.

            replyreport