Link Love: Why I Love Giving It Away
Apr 172008
Since we’ve been on the topic of gifts and freebies let’s talk about giving away links. One of the things we all love to get are inbound links but do you pass the link love?
Linking to other sites is actually very good practice and has multiple benefits affecting differing aspects such as the site’s SEO, usability, and even credibility.
- Getting the attention of the site/blog you link to. The chances of someone linking back to your site (or at least visiting your site) increases when you link to them.
- Giving credibility to your statements. By linking to your resources you help back up your statements. Citing references will make your statements more credible.
- Avoiding plagiarism. If you quote the statements of others or get ideas from other people/sites linking to them gives them credit for their work.
- Providing your readers easy access to find the additional information they need. By linking to relevant articles/sites mentioned or used as resource in your blog post your provide readers you help your readers find more information without having to search for it. While some do not like this thinking that it will result in readers “leaving” their website you should realise that if your reader does decide to leave your site it would be because they have either found the information they need in your site and will leave satisfied or can not find what they are looking for and leave disgruntled. By offering links to useful information you ensure that even if your content does or does not contain the exact information they need they will remember that they can find other related information through your site.
Today is May 12, 2008
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Great points Hannah. Giving links away where appropriate is important and I definitely check out people who link to my sites.
Link love is a door that needs to swing both ways. People shouldn’t be afraid to link out to quality resources, especially when they are in your vertical, because this will make you a solid resource within your vertical. Linking amongst other companies who might be competing with you seems strange, but giving credit to people who post solid articles is never a bad thing to do — you gotta give to get.
All great reasons why link love is a good think. I practice linking often for the users and the webmasters.
Excellent advice. I’ve been “no/do follow” for a year now and recently installed CommentLuv on each blog. I want people to enjoy their visit, return, and establish a relationship with me. If they buy something fine, if they do not that is fine too.