When you are creating blog posts, web pages and squidoo lenses, the goal is to link back to cards within your store that compliment the subject matter of the piece you are writing.  I want to briefly explain the best practices when it comes to linking to your cards.
 
Now lets say that you already have your unique "sell this card" link for one of your 'funny birthday cards' that you want to promote.  Also, lets say you have already written an article about funny birthday cards and how much fun they are to send, and even more fun to receive.... And your now ready to link to the cards in your store.
 
It is important to use the most specific keyword phrase to describe the card as the 'anchored link' text.  Wikipedia describes the anchor text as "...the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink."  The anchor text holds significant weight with the search engines and help your cards rank even higher in the search engines for the targeted keyword phrases!
 
Now for an example of the best practice with anchor text...
read more about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_text">anchor text</a>
 
Now for an example of what not to do....
To read more about anchor text on wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_text">click here.</a>  
 
In this example, "Click Here" is the anchor text, but has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter of the page I am linking to.  Search engines don't like this and we want to be sure we are creating content in a way that search engines like!  
 
 
To relate this back to the 'funny birthday card' example, you can add a line at the end that is as simple as....
 
"Here is my favorite <a href="http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/yoursellthiscardlink">funny birthday card.</a>"
 
The proper use of anchor text when you link to your store will make sure that the search engines are able to 1)find your cards and 2)will make sure the search engines properly index your cards, helping them deliver more paying customers to your card store!
 
So be sure to link to your store in a way that anchors a keyword phrase like...
 
Visit my <a href="http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/yourcardstoreid">Greeting Card Store</a> as opposed to...  
 
To view my greeting card store, <a href="http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/yourcardstoreid">click here</a>  
 
Anchoring your links properly will make sure you receive the maximum benefit of the links you post!
 
And, to receive the maximum profit, be sure to use the Promotion Email Link when you link people to your store!  Found under the HTML tab within the 'Card Widget' page, this unique link will offer you a commission on any cards that are sold when you refer a new customer to us! That means you could earn an additional $.50 per card sold, up to $25, simply for referring a new customer with your Promional Email Link!!!  

Ernestine, thanks for the honesty and expanding the idea to cover text, too!  The alt-text on images is also a very important search engine optimization piece.  I'm pretty sure we all start off oblivious to the text we are using to anchor our links when we first start marketing via the internet....  But this is where the power of community comes in!  We are able to help each other learn from our personal mistakes and successes!!!  
 
To 'show' what Ernestine and I are talking about with alt text, below is an example.....
 
This is the code I obtained from my GCU artist account via the sell this card link.  I grabbed the link with the image, which does not contain the alt text for the image.
 
<a href="http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/-Fancy+Frogs-greeting+card-74819?pid=74819&a mp;gcu=43713339907" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.greetingcarduniverse.com/images/csphoto/1107/00/00/13/17/13/74819_ shadow.jpg" border="0"></a>
 
We need to add one line to add the alt text with the keywords we are promoting....
 
img alt="keyword phrase goes here"  (be sure to include the quotes... the words between the quotes are picked up by the search engines as the alternate text for the picture)
 
and it needs to be added in the <img src=""> tag, between the < and img
 
 
Therefore... My final snippet of code to use an image with alt text, to link to a card would look like...
 
<a href="http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/-Fancy+Frogs-greeting+card-74819?pid=74819&a mp;gcu=43713339907" target="_blank"><img alt="keyword phrase goes here" img src="http://images.greetingcarduniverse.com/images/csphoto/1107/00/00/13/17/13/74819_ shadow.jpg" border="0"></a>
 
Great Tip, Ernestine!!!  Thank you for bringing that up because alt text does hold a fair amount of weight with the search engines!  

Judy, when it comes to internet marketing, following the best practices is very important.... But testing is also important.
 
Email marketing and online questionnaires are very different from marketing your cards via blogs and web 2.0 promotion in one major way.  Not only are users reading your content, but the search engine spiders are, also.  
 
If the search engine spiders can easily understand what keywords the content you are publishing relates to, they can help drive heaps of relevant traffic to your cards via organic search engine traffic.  If the spiders don't know what keywords your store is related to, you may receive little or no positive effect in the search engines, which is missing out on a HUGE opportunity.  This is your opportunity to 'tell' the search engine spiders what keywords to display your cards as results for.... This is an opportunity you ought not miss!  
 
Again, I completely believe in split testing and studying performance of efforts over time to assure maximum return on efforts.... But, when it comes to publishing unique content online, properly anchoring links will create a number of benefits both 'seen' and 'unseen'.... From the people who read your blog to the search engine spiders who index everything published on your blog. In this situation, more often than not, the unseen search engine spiders can prove to be much more powerful.

Judy, Great to hear about the sale from your blog!  Consistent focus effort over time can have amazing results!  
 
Here's a trick that will help you link to any page on GCU you want!   I totally understand what your trying to do and I think it is GREAT!  We've boot-strapped this feature together, so we didn't get all of the functionality we would have liked in this first version, but here is how you create a link to any gcu page with the sell this card feature.
 
First, log into your account and click on the Card Widget link under the Community section.
 
Once on the card widget page, click on the Get HTML tab.  The bottom field, "Promotional Email Link" has what we want.  You want to take the long number that is at the end of the link, along with the &gcu=XXXXXXXXXXX part. (You will have a unique number instead of X's) Copy and paste this into a blank notepad  
 
Now, we are either going to add this exactly like it is to the url of the page we want to, or we will have to make 1 little change... This is depending upon the page we are linking to... Now this gets a bit in depth here, and can end up linking to a page not found, but we'll double check the link before publishing it and I'm going to keep it as simple as possible.
 
Look at the url of the page you want to link to and see if it contains a ? in it or not.
 
For example....
With a question mark - http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/Birthday-Belated?cid=196&ref=cb_wide_lef t_side_cat
Without a question mark - http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/Holidays-Labor+Day+-+United+States  
 
If the url you are adding your sell this card number to already has a question mark, you attach the &gcu=XXXXXXXXXXX we have on our notepad, exactly as we copied it.
 
If the url you are adding your unique referral ID to does not have a question mark, we must change the & to a ? before adding it to the end of the link, so you would add ?gcu=XXXXXXXXXXX to the end of the link.
 
With our earlier examples, the end result would be  
With a question mark - http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/Birthday-Belated?cid=196&ref=cb_wide_lef t_side_cat&gcu=XXXXXXXXXXX
Without a question mark - http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/Holidays-Labor+Day+-+United+States?gcu=XXXXX XXXXXX
 
I hope this helps you how to turn any link into a referral link!

[quote author=Judy_139270 link=1280190071/0#7 date=1281603313]
Am I right in thinking that the reason for creating good content in our blogs, tweets etc is not just to get people to buy our cards direct from our promotions (like the card one of my blog readers bought) but also to create a useful and active web presence that will result in the web spiders picking up our cards so that when people google, our cards will come up near the top of the list? A kind of indirect as well as direct promotion? [quote]
 
You are 100% correct... You appear to be an expert to the readers who gain value from your content, which brings them back.... AND the search engines are able to index all of the keyword rich content, helping deliver more interested readers to your site.  
 
The spiders help deliver relevant traffic to your site.... The quality of your content is what keeps them reading every word and coming back for more!