Hey QG Writers,
I hope everyone is doing well. Today I am going to talk a little bit about why links to homepages in articles should, for the most part, be avoided. We have been seeing an increase in homepage links and are hoping that the information in this post will shed some light on why they should not be included. When you include a bunch of homepage links in an article, it requires the reader of the article to then navigate around the sites being linked to in order to find the information they are after. This will often cause the reader frustration, as they want to be able to click on the link and be taken directly to the information they are looking for. You also want the links you include in your articles to be as directly related to the topic you are writing about as possible and 9 times out of 10 those are not going to be the homepage.
Try to put yourself in the reader’s shoes. Do you want to click on a link that you think is going to have further information on a topic that interests you only to find that you are taken to a homepage and have to search around the site to find what you are looking for? Personally, I am likely to back out of the site completely and find an article that links me directly to the information I am looking for.
This is not to say that homepages are always completely unacceptable. There will be instances where you will see instructions calling for links to associations or organizations. In these instances, the links should be to the homepages.
As always, please feel free to email with any questions!