Home blogging Traffic The Benefits of Linking for the Linker

The Benefits of Linking for the Linker

Posted on January 25, 2011 Written by 24 Comments

Last week we talked about some different links and why they’re important. However, we mostly talked about why links benefit the linkee and not the linker. Let’s do the opposite today and talk about what happens when you link to other blogs.

A common argument I hear for not linking to others is that links are distracting. That they entice others to visit someone else’s content, sometimes without even finishing up reading what you wrote. This may be true, but I argue that if you write good, compelling, engaging content folks will stay with you to the end regardless. There are benefits to linking that far outweigh the chance that someone will leave your blog to visit someone else.

Get on Radar

When you link to someone else, you get on the radar. The blogger you link to will be curious as to why you linked and see what you’re up to. He may even become so impressed he’ll offer you link love or a retweet in return. At the very least he now knows about your blog and may subscribe or become part of your regular community. Ditto the people who read his blog. If he allows pingbacks to appear in the comments, you now have a link to your blog on his. Pingbacks send more traffic than you might believe.

Search Engines Take Notice

Linking to others awakens  the search engines. They’ll notice you’re sending traffic to others and also get you on their radar. Inbound links are great but outbound links rock too.

Turn on Your Community

The best reason for sharing links is that your community appreciates when you share  blogs and bloggers. Now, you may think you’re driving traffic elsewhere, and while that’s true, it’s also true that there’s room enough for everyone. People read more than one blog, you can embrace it or ignore it but the folks who do best are those foster relationships and spread the love.

Good Juju

Ok, this won’t net you any traffic or clout, but it’ll certainly make you feel good. When you share and link you pass around a good vibe. Beside, once we stop linking blogging becomes a vanity project. The first blogs were actually lists of links to cool stuff, the ultimate sharing projects.

Should you only link to popular blogs?

Your readers appreciate a good share regardless of where it comes from. Don’t discount a smaller blog because the blogger might not have a bigger reach. If it illustrates your point and is a terrific read, do share. However, you also have to be wary of the company you keep. Linking to spammers and scammers won’t do you any favors.

Inbound links rock, no doubt about it. But there are also benefits to sending it someone else’s way too.

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  • Beverly

    I was wondering this EXACT same thing last night. I’m ready to begin my first official blog (rather than blogging via chatboard), but I don’t know where to begin or which to choose. Please help!!!

  • Beverly

    I was wondering this EXACT same thing last night. I’m ready to begin my first official blog (rather than blogging via chatboard), but I don’t know where to begin or which to choose. Please help!!!

  • http://www.facebook.com/danielle.mcgaw Danielle McGaw

    You know, I’d been thinking along similar lines lately. For one, I have all this PLR content – loads of it – and I wanted to play around and see if I could do something with it with the bare minimum of work. So, created a few niche blog son Blogger.

    And I’ve also been yearning for a spot that is not business related and just kind of a spot for me so I started using an old domain that wasn’t really serving its original purpose and have been playing around there. Sometimes the posts are really short and other times they are long and rambling. But it is fun. :) (Would love to be visited on a non-professional level at http://adynamiclife.net)

  • http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ MJ Ray

    I’m disappointed to see you step backwards like that. Blogger is hell for commenters. I see your new blog seems to be using the Javascript-required comment form. That doesn’t seem to work consistently in my browsers, so I won’t be commenting. I mean, I don’t like disqus, but it sort-of-works well enough not to lose comments as often as that Blogger form. Really, disqus, blogger… it looks like you want to keep commenters away from your blogs, at arm’s length, for someone else to manage.

    At least Blogger’s dreaded disability-discriminating “Visual Verification” isn’t in use. Google’s anti-comment-spam tools are still stone-age and support seems pretty much non-existant.

    • http://kommein.com Deb Ng

      I’m sorry to let you down, MJ. Truthfully though, I don’t see myself as taking a step backward as much as I see myself taking a new direction. I haven’t used Blogger in years and would love to write a comparison. How can I do that without experience? the thing is, the Blogger blog has only been up for a day. It’s going to take time to tweak and get running in good order. I’m sorry you too a five minute look around and made up your mind not to participate.

      As for comments, well, the people who know me know that my community means everything to me and the last thing I want to do is keep people from commenting.

      Thank you for commenting.

  • http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ MJ Ray

    I’m disappointed to see you step backwards like that. Blogger is hell for commenters. I see your new blog seems to be using the Javascript-required comment form. That doesn’t seem to work consistently in my browsers, so I won’t be commenting. I mean, I don’t like disqus, but it sort-of-works well enough not to lose comments as often as that Blogger form. Really, disqus, blogger… it looks like you want to keep commenters away from your blogs, at arm’s length, for someone else to manage.

    At least Blogger’s dreaded disability-discriminating “Visual Verification” isn’t in use. Google’s anti-comment-spam tools are still stone-age and support seems pretty much non-existant.

    • http://kommein.com Deb Ng

      I’m sorry to let you down, MJ. Truthfully though, I don’t see myself as taking a step backward as much as I see myself taking a new direction. I haven’t used Blogger in years and would love to write a comparison. How can I do that without experience? the thing is, the Blogger blog has only been up for a day. It’s going to take time to tweak and get running in good order. I’m sorry you too a five minute look around and made up your mind not to participate.

      As for comments, well, the people who know me know that my community means everything to me and the last thing I want to do is keep people from commenting.

      Thank you for commenting.

  • http://twitter.com/psjoneswrites P.S. Jones

    I blogged with Blogger for my personal blog for years and recently made the switch to WordPress because there were a few things I wanted to do with my blog that WordPress could help with. (Specifically the ones you named.) But Blogger has plenty of ways to customize your blog and I learned quite a few tricks in my time there. In the end, if you’re doing it right, nobody would even know what platform you’re on anyway.

    I hate the native commenting system on Blogger too, but WordPress’s native system isn’t much better. The worst parts of each one comes from the owner not understanding that you should adjust the commenting settings to what helps your readers comment easier.

  • http://www.iampsjones.com P.S. Jones

    I blogged with Blogger for my personal blog for years and recently made the switch to WordPress because there were a few things I wanted to do with my blog that WordPress could help with. (Specifically the ones you named.) But Blogger has plenty of ways to customize your blog and I learned quite a few tricks in my time there. In the end, if you’re doing it right, nobody would even know what platform you’re on anyway.

    I hate the native commenting system on Blogger too, but WordPress’s native system isn’t much better. The worst parts of each one comes from the owner not understanding that you should adjust the commenting settings to what helps your readers comment easier.

  • http://twitter.com/icypop Icy Sedgwick

    I use Blogger, but with my own domain. A lot of the WordPress themes are available as Blogger templates now and Blogger have added the ability to add whole pages to your blog, so as far as the “look” of it goes, you can get something that looks very similar to WordPress. Plus you have the advantage of the ‘Google Follow’ function, which I think is a little friendlier than simply subscribing by RSS as you can see who your followers are, and follow them back.

  • http://twitter.com/icypop Icy Sedgwick

    I use Blogger, but with my own domain. A lot of the WordPress themes are available as Blogger templates now and Blogger have added the ability to add whole pages to your blog, so as far as the “look” of it goes, you can get something that looks very similar to WordPress. Plus you have the advantage of the ‘Google Follow’ function, which I think is a little friendlier than simply subscribing by RSS as you can see who your followers are, and follow them back.

  • http://twitter.com/moneyonlinesorg James Sanders

    Another thing to point out when it comes to linking as well and the curiosity mentioned….smart marketers attempting to monetize their internet real estate will use the link information to check you out to get an idea for your visitor demographic. Depending on the amount of traffic you send them, they can use that information to help monetize their own sites to increase sales. It can also turn into monetization for you if you run any paid ads on your site as well. Just some additional input concerning another good reason to link. Just be careful to avoid spammy sites and link farms. Google doesn’t smile to kindly on that and if you have too many links to such “bad neighborhoods” you could find your rankings slipping. Also, with more recent ranking algorithms at Google, relevancy will also play a part. But all this is another story which you can google me if you like and find Sanders Consultation Group Plus for further reading on SEO type stuff in the webmaster area =)

  • http://twitter.com/moneyonlinesorg James Sanders

    Another thing to point out when it comes to linking as well and the curiosity mentioned….smart marketers attempting to monetize their internet real estate will use the link information to check you out to get an idea for your visitor demographic. Depending on the amount of traffic you send them, they can use that information to help monetize their own sites to increase sales. It can also turn into monetization for you if you run any paid ads on your site as well. Just some additional input concerning another good reason to link. Just be careful to avoid spammy sites and link farms. Google doesn’t smile to kindly on that and if you have too many links to such “bad neighborhoods” you could find your rankings slipping. Also, with more recent ranking algorithms at Google, relevancy will also play a part. But all this is another story which you can google me if you like and find Sanders Consultation Group Plus for further reading on SEO type stuff in the webmaster area =)

  • http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

    You’ve made some excellent points. Ive made an effort to link out more but since I dont want the reader to spend nanoseconds making a click/no-click decision (you know my whole argument on this…it was only 2000 words lol) I link to it on the bottom of the post.

    I think that way everybody wins, best of all words kind of thing…

    Great points Deb…gracias :-)

  • http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

    You’ve made some excellent points. Ive made an effort to link out more but since I dont want the reader to spend nanoseconds making a click/no-click decision (you know my whole argument on this…it was only 2000 words lol) I link to it on the bottom of the post.

    I think that way everybody wins, best of all words kind of thing…

    Great points Deb…gracias :-)

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  • http://www.pixldinc.com/blog Deidre Brathwaite

    Hiya Deb,
    What a great post and what a coincidence that on Monday I wrote my first ‘ Link Post’ for 2011. Totally agree that one doesn’t have to be limited to link to only to the popular blogs as sometimes one can find a less popular blogger who has a perspective that is totally different and adds an unexpected spin .

  • http://www.pixldinc.com/blog Deidre Brathwaite

    Hiya Deb,
    What a great post and what a coincidence that on Monday I wrote my first ‘ Link Post’ for 2011. Totally agree that one doesn’t have to be limited to link to only to the popular blogs as sometimes one can find a less popular blogger who has a perspective that is totally different and adds an unexpected spin .

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  • http://www.brosix.com/ Brosix

    I think occasionally links are good if they benefit both parties AND the audience.

  • http://www.brosix.com/ Brosix

    I think occasionally links are good if they benefit both parties AND the audience.

  • http://www.whitehatters.com White Hat SEO

    With links, the popularity of your website can increase manifold.With increased page rank comes an increase in organic traffic. This is the best traffic because it is often a steady source of profit potential.One of the important things to keep in mind is the fact that the real objective of link building is to benefit in the long run. There are some shady link building specialists that will promise to get your website up on search engine rankings in an instant.