I’m not a big fan of standalone links pages – pages with long lists of outbound links to third parties that may or may not be relevant to your website or business. They’re really just an artifact from the early days of the web when folks had no idea what to put on their site. In a fit of desperation, someone just said, “Let’s add a links page. Everyone else has one.” Best practices today call instead for integrating relevant external links conscientiously into your site’s content (see what I did there?). It’s the modern day version of a bibliography and footnotes, so to speak.
There are exceptions. Many, if not most, agency websites include a “Carriers” page or section on their website with company logos or names that link to the carriers’ respective websites. It’s a relevant feature – these are an essential part of your product offering, and customers will want to learn about them. The carriers appreciate them, too. Logos and links help build the company’s brand and add SEO value as well.
There remains the risk, however, that your site visitor will click on these outbound links and head down the virtual rabbit hole, never to return to your site. Worse yet, if the carrier’s website includes a quoting or lead generation tool, that lead might end up going to a competing agency. Yikes.
Rejoice – there’s good news for Tower Hill agencies who want to link to THIG.com. By adding a simple tag to the end of the THIG.com link, our website will automatically identify the click as “your click,” which does two things for you: (1) The Agent Search feature on THIG.com disappears, and (2) any lead generated by our Quick Quote tool will automatically route to your agency. Here’s how to do it:
- Find your Tower Hill agency code. It’s a six-digit identifier beginning with “FL” (e.g., FL9999).
- Add the following to the end of your link to THIG.com: ?agent=FL9999
Just be sure to replace FL9999 with your own agency code. Examples:
Tower Hill home page: http://www.thig.com/?agent=FL9999
OR
Quick Quote: https://www.thig.com/get-a-quote/?agent=FL9999
Anyone coming to THIG.com from a tagged link will be identified as “yours” for the duration of the visit.
If you’re unable to do this yourself, your web designer should have no problem taking care of it with a minute’s worth of work.
Questions? Feel free to contact us or use the Comments section below.