Interconnected contextual webs

When creating content for the web, it can’t stand alone on it’s own, if you want it to be found.

The hypertext transfer protocol, http, is a method of connecting similar content together so that a web of interconnected links is formed. As more content is linked into that web it creates an interconnected contextual web. This can be done either on one site or across a number of sites. As search indexing takes place through the interconnected contextual web, the authority of the site or sites will rise. This is the power of content marketing.

Another term for this is cross-linking, but cross-linking does not in its own create a contextual web. Search engine indexing ‘bots work by following link to link, much like a web surfer would. Just as a real life web surfer would look for links on the page that leads deeper into what that person is interested in, so do search engines.

Now everyone must have clicked a link at some point and thought, yes, that’s exactly what I am looking for only to find that the page that the clicked link opens has nothing to do with what the clicked link looked like it was about. This is a practise that is known as link baiting and should be avoided as the ‘bots are looking for a contextual link, and will downgrade your site’s ranking accordingly if there is no context.

Interconnected contextual webs are a great way of using content marketing to build your brand, but make sure that the links that you put in are relevant to the content that they point to. If the link word is content then it should point to a page that is about content. The interconnected contextual web then becomes a content gateway that will breakdown the boundary between brands and buyers.