I’m unsure how by metrics am I going to depict this, but it is surely a remarkable reference. Some would agree and some ould not, just as it should be. What are the things that you’d take into consideration before linking to a site?
If we were to dissect out the essentials of blogging, links play a vital role. Links as many calls it are votes given by one person for the credibility of another. Every time someone want to link to a site, he things twice. There are many thoughts that goes through your head. Some bloggers are voracious linkers like John TP, some are selective like Darren and many are in between.
Now, if we all know that links are the building blocks of the internet and the blogging world, why do we hesitate to link?
After all, a link is important to another person as it is to you. So why do you not be proactive and link to others?
What are your mental blocks?
Few of the things that keep you from linking to a person are these questions.
Is extensive linking good?
Many a times, people ask me, Mani why do you keep linking to Google , AdSense and such sites often, Is it good for SEO?
Well, not really. I link to them because it helps as a reference to even novice readers who might be new to a product like AdSense. It might help me in SEO in very little amounts, but that’s not my interest first.
And, I’ve never recommended anyone not to link too much. It all depends on how many incoming links you’ve got. If the ratio of incoming to out going links is fat, you are in good shape, if it’s thinner then you might not want to link too much. That’s the point.
So provided you have a healthy number of incoming links to fight the competition, you can go ahead link to various resources and content relted websites, that’s not a problem at all. Having said that, make sure that you dont go about inserting stand alone links on the sidebar and the footers as non contextual links. When Google spiders a page, it can easily make out the contextual links and the non contextual links.
If there are 10 links within an article write up, referring to content related websites, it is perfectly fine. But at the same time, if there are 10 links on the sidebar referring to websites (which cannot be determined if it’s contextual or not), it may not be ahealthy situation.
So please expel your doubts on linking and number of links. If it’s all well withing the article and it supports the article, Google sees no harm in them.
Does the guy who’s linked deserve the link?
This is yet another popular factor. Before linking to (mostly personal sites) a site, it is normal for someone to think as to whether the person being linked to is actually deserving the credit. Well, the choice is your’s. If it’s not a relevant content you better not link. Keep in mind that you are not linking to a person to make him happy. You should be linking to a site because the content in the website is interesting and you like to refer it to someone else. Simple as that.
When you think in that sense, you might link to a person boldly than otherwise.
Will he reciprocate?
Again, here are two situations. 1 – If you are linking to a person to make him happy, then chances are that he would just be happy with your link and never link back to you.
2- If you are genuinely linking to a person because you think the content is interesting and you agree/disagrre to it, then he sees some value in your link and is more likely to reciprocate.
So, when you link, let the question be as to whether your link is passing on value or not rather than it is to make someone happy.
Will he acknowledge it?
This is interesting. There is no thumbrule to this, but from experience I’ve found that genuine and gentlemen bloggers do acknowledge links. Some of them I can name are Nate Whitehill, Michael Martine and Kevin Muldoon. They are big names in the blogosphere but rarely miss a chance to acknowledge genuine links. I’ve experieinced it over the years.
So if your link is genuine and passes on value, people are likely to acknowledge it. Again, it depends on whom you are linking.
Will he just enjoy the link or will he return it back?
This might be of interest to all those link-exchange freaks out there. My sincere apologies to all of you. But this practice is something that I don’t recommend. If you are linking to someone assuming (or even nudgin him on chat) that he will link you back, then I’m sorry even if they link back, it is not going to give you any value. It just becomes an excercise that is not going to help in long time.
So essentially speaking, when you realy have to link to someone, because an article he wrote is interesting or you’d like to refer it to your reader, please do go ahead and link to him even if you don’t like his hairstyle.
But never link to someone in the hope that tommorow he will link back to you or send you some money over paypal.
I find linking to others is more than just getting link juice by expecting people to give me back a link (this is how I think when I am still on my old Blogger blog).
I find linking to others, as I have said many times, can help to build a network, notify authority bloggers about our posts (if we link to them), get minor traffic via trackbacks and of course, help explaining things easier to our readers.
Those who are still expecting for an exchange is not those who are enjoying blogging. I am happy and will feel proud of myself when someone links to me, which I didn’t ask for it.
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and if the guy who linked me has better and more interesting stuff than mine,then a definite link back is automatically on…
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Mani, I honestly appreciate the mention! In this day and age, it’s an honor to be called a gentleman.
I can think of a couple other reasons why people don’t link:
They’re lazy and it takes effort to look it up and make sure the link is correct and then go through the steps of creating it in the post (I know, that’s some serious laziness, but I bet it happens).
Some people are under the belief that linking out is bad for a couple reasons: it directs people out of the site and little to no outbound links is better for preserving PageRank (whatever that means).
Bloggers tend to be a karmic bunch. They’ll most often reciprocate, which means the more you link out, the more they link back to you.
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Mani Karthik
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Completely agree Michael. Valid points there.
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I used to write without even thinking about other peoples opinions. So, for me at least, linking to other people means that I’m thinking about other points of view, rather just my own! That’s probably a strange way of looking at it, but it’s true!
You could also look at linking as a simple way of bringing other people in to the conversation – and conversation is what we’re all interested in!
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Good points Mani,One question i wanted to ask you. Are many links i blogroll useful or harmful wrt Google.
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Madhur..there are quite a lot of them in your blogroll page and I think it’s ok if you are getting them reciprocated and some traffic trickling down. Of course it’s not healthy, but if you can balance it with incoming links, they’re fine. I’m not a link exchange enthusiast, so I won’t recommend adding so many links. It’s your take, and you balance it.
Mani Karthik’s last blog post..Why do you think twice before linking to someone ?
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