Did You Know Of This Tool That Saves Permanent Links For You?
It spares your readers from bumping into 404 pages.
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If you write on the web, you use other websites as resources to give your content more value and build authority. When was the last time you checked on those pages you’ve previously linked to? Do you have any idea what your readers are getting into when following links that no longer point to the intended source? Can you imagine what a turn-off is for a reader to get all warmed up by your writing, stumble onto a line with some enticing anchor text on it, and once he clicks on the link, turns out there’s nothing to read in there?
Link rot is a growing phenomenon. The internet is forever changing. Over time, many links cease to point to the originally targeted web page. Medicine, science, or technology articles, as well as academic journals, are all suffering from this link rot epidemic. And if you quote any of these more or less often, chances are that your content has been affected by link rot too. You just didn’t know it until now.
Well, I recently discovered a free tool that promises a solution to this epidemic. If you care about keeping your work with its original citations, you might want to look into it. This is no promotional article and I have no benefit from mentioning this website other than the sheer satisfaction of helping fellow writers.
I haven’t considered using it for citations so far, but rather as a way to make sure that the texts I send to my clients as a freelance writer are saved somewhere on the web in the exact form that I created them. I bet you don’t like it when you send in a text that the client agrees to but he later decides to edit on. And if you want to share that text with a prospective client and showcase your expertise, you end up giving him a link to a web page that was altered by your previous client (while you’re clueless about the changes!). This is where Perma.cc, as the website is called, comes in handy.
It creates a time capsule for any webpage you want, an URL that you can return to, again and again, knowing for a fact that it displays the original content and that it will always be there for you (or anyone who gets that link) to access it. No more linking to articles that your clients edited without your approval. And no more linking to “Sorry! The page you were looking for was not found.”
Just to be clear, Perma works with pages that are already live on the web. It’s as simple as finding that page online, copying its URL and pasting it onto Perma, generating the Perma link, and using that link for future reference.
Have you tried it? Would you try it? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!
