Why Outbound Links Matter For Bloggers

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outbound links

For as long as search engine optimizers have existed, they’ve focused a huge amount of time and resources on obtaining inbound links for their sites. There’s a very good reason for that: among the 200 or so signals that Google considers when determining ranking positions in the SERPs, inbound links are of vital importance. However, there is considerable diversity of opinion when it comes to linking out from a site to other sites. SEOs are often concerned that outbound links will degrade their site’s standing and prefer to link to their own content, keeping the link juice they gather to themselves. They are also worried about giving away link juice and hence ranking potential to other sites within their niche.

In fact, outbound links can be beneficial for SEO, so it’s worth thinking about the ways in which such links can both benefit and harm a site’s status in the eyes of Google and other search engines. [Read more…]

Is “Deep Linking” in Trouble?

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Linking directly to individual pages on a Web site instead of the home page, also known as “Deep Linking”, is a staple of blogging and the Internet in general. It is used as a means to reference sources, forward interesting articles and, generally, get information out there on the Web.

Without deep linking, social news would likely not exist, many Web 2.0 services (such as Delicious) would have to close and even Google would have to drastically change the way it operates. The Web would, almost overnight, become a much more difficult to use and less efficient place.

However, a recent lawsuit filed by GateHouse media has asked new questions about deep linking and its possible legal implications.

Though the lawsuit is clearly misguided in some ways, including the claim that the site loses advertising over deep linking, it is worth taking a quick moment to look at some of the potential legal hazards that come with deep linking and how to avoid them. [Read more…]

Exploring Social Media: Promoting Your Link Backs to You

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Exploring Social Media article series badgeYesterday in Exploring Social Media: The Power of the Link Needs Content, I introduced the most powerful social media tool in the world, the link, and explained that unless you have make the link direct people to valuable and useful content, you are shooting blanks. The link makes a lot of noise with nothing to show for it.

The impact of linking to yourself is magnified in value. When you email or publish a link to something you wrote, recommending it, you are telling the world:

  • I know that which I write about.
  • I am an expert in the subject.
  • I have the experience to back up what I’m writing.
  • This is the best I can do.

Do your links qualify?

When you contact a blogger or anyone to encourage them to link to you, do you keep these things in mind? Are you offering your best work? Does your blog or social media tool show the world you are an expert in this?

If you have the proof behind your link, then maybe your failure is in the presentation of that link, especially when directed towards bloggers, the most capable of spreading the word far and wide about you and your blog. [Read more…]

Exploring Social Media: The Power of the Link Needs Content

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Exploring Social Media article series badgeIn The Power of the Link and Don’t Guest Blog Until You Have Content, I talk about two very important subjects that apply to our ongoing discussion and Exploring Social Media Series.

First, a link is a door people open to your world, be it a world within your blog, social media tools and services, or a recommendation to visit another world, one you hope your fans will enjoy so much, they will return to your world with joy, eager for more and telling the world about what you have to offer.

Second, if you link without anything worth linking to, without anything positive to offer people, without anything worth recommending, without anything worth returning to, you have lost the power in social influence within the modern online world.

If you link to yourself, then these two characteristics are magnified. You are offering people a gateway into your world, one they expect is worth linking to, deserving of attention, exciting, and worth telling others about.

The link is the most powerful social media tool of all. [Read more…]

Blogging Ampersands

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I agree with Gruber, this is truly a focused blog! The Ampersand blogs about, you guessed it, ampersands. Only ampersands. And you know what? It kind of works, because we’re linking it and so does Kottke and Liquidicity, and probably even more than that. The design twist of it all makes it something anyone remotely interested in typography, logo design, or just ampersands I guess, can at least take a quick peek at. Got to love niche blogging, right?