Please Link Responsibly - Relevancy Doesn’t Matter Anymore In Blogging!
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You’re a blogger an online publisher/writer, you definitely want people to read your stuff, and you certainly want more incoming links. I do.
You also wanna rank as high as possible for certain keywords in the search engines, and get a good Page Rank. I do.
And I also want people to read, discuss, and comment on my blog posts. Don’t you?
Linking to a blog using irrelevant keywords won’t help making the blog owner want to comment on your post(s). If you want people to click and read, help them, let them know where the link they’re about to click will take them. I rarely click on links that are not relevant or don’t give me a good enough reason to make the effort of clicking. (hey! clicking is exhausting, and takes a lot of efforts!)
Please Link Responsibly
Here are some examples of what a relevant link is probably not. Just to make things clear, this is my opinion, so you may or may not agree, but we can always discuss this in the comment section heh :)
(The words that are in bold are links):
I could probably come up with hundreds of ways not to link to a post, but those we see a lot, and I honestly don’t get it. Why would someone want to have “here” or “this” as the anchor text? Please link responsibly. :)
Anchor Text Is The Key
I can’t write about the way not to link to a blog without giving examples of how to properly link to a blog or a blog post. Here are some examples of relevant anchor text (The words that are in bold are links):
And the timeless classic:
John Chow will show you how to make money online. (evil) - John wants to rank high for those keywords.
It’s The Readers That Matters The Most
Liz over at Successful Blog wrote such a great post some time ago titled: Dear Emperor: A Test For Your Next Link Post, I think this is brilliant!
Linking out is always good, if done properly, with the right anchor text and relevant keywords. If you link to a blog or blog post, try to make it so that when the search engines and the readers see this link and see the anchor text, they find it relevant. It is common sense for a lot of people, but for some it’s not.
We all want more incoming links, and my guess is we all want relevant links with the right text and keywords. Maybe a good place to start is on our own blog when we link out.
Your Turn To Talk
I’d like to have your take on this, not about the link trains and all, but more regarding “real” links in blog posts. Like when you mention an article or link to a blog. Do you usually link using “click here” or “this post“, or you try to make sure your readers know where they will end up?
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24 Responses to “Please Link Responsibly - Relevancy Doesn’t Matter Anymore In Blogging!”
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Jon,
This is a great article. The websites that I operate that have a more targeted audience are certainly the sites with much more activity.
I have a general current events site that gets a good amount of traffic but it’s all based on different news stories and it’s not all that focused on one subject so the activity is varied. The controversial the subject the more activity.
It’s funny though the current events website gets much more search engine traffic, and it spikes huge depending on the story.
The website is http://www.johnclarklive.com , I’m am looking for ideas that will better monetize the site, but I’m not quite sure how to monetize a current news story site.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
John Clark
Hi John, well since on this site you’re linking out quite often it’s already a good thing :)
A s for monetization, adsense works really good for me, maybe you could try some affiliate programs (that fits the topics, like a banner at the end of the posts or something like that) or sell text links and banner spots, that usually works pretty good too :)
This is an excellent article! I see lots of “click HERE to read an article!” links. To tell you the truth, I used to do that when I first started on another blog!
John Clark- Build up your traffic, then sell ads to companies.
Hi Grace, hehe I used to do that too when I started this blog, but realized I personally never clicked on “click here” links, so :)
Yep, building traffic and seeling ads works great, provided you can build traffic and readership. :)
[…] Please Link Responsibly My friend Jon just wrote an excellent article about linking to other sites from your site. I think I am generally pretty good about this practice, however I am now going to be even more careful about it. […]
Hi Jon!
Thanks for the love! More importantly thanks for talking about this and for putting linking into a relevant context again. Every point you make has a broad underscore in my mind.
Writers who take the time to link as you describe are so much easier to read. We don’t realize that writing here and click here as anchor text makes a reader stop for a split second to connect the words to what they might mean. That little stop is like a speed bump in a road — hardly noticed, but it slows us down in a way that it wouldn’t if it wasn’t there.
Hi Liz, thank you for writing this excellent post on your blog! :)
It’s true, it’s so much easier to read when you use the right words. When you read, say 20-25 posts one after the other, all those “click here” links are really a waste of time, like you said it takes a split second to understand it, so at the end of the day, it’s more fun to read something that flows nice :)
Does this count as relevant … *?
:)
hahaha, good one! well I guess it does count as relevant! :)
what would be considered irrelevant is if you had linked this asterisk to your blog or something, but actually you link to the only page it really makes sense to link to :)
yeah this is a great post. I agree because if you choose to link to another blog you obviously like that blog and want to help it by linking back, so you should try you best to link properly with decent anchor text. If only every blogger had this did it…
Hi Marc, totallly, the blogs I link to, I read and like, and wanna help them the best I can, so :)
I just really think it depends on the context of the post.
I don’t make a habit of it, but there are times I catch myself doing it. When I write a link in a post, it’s not more of the thought or the expectation of getting a link back that is the reason why I am linking to the external site. I just make it up by knowing that my strategy works in how to get the “good links” *in and out* and when to use it.
But I see your point :)
Hey Sharon, if the reason you’re linking out is good, no matter what text you use it’s fine (I just feel it’S better to link with keywords, and relevant anchor text) :)
Hi Jon
Linking responsibly is good net-tiquette that should be second nature to all bloggers. Unfortunately, this isn’t true in the WWW.
I’ve noticed some A-list or big blogs with huge readership that are equally guilty of “irresponsible” linking, e.g. “you can click here, here and here…”
I guess these A-list bloggers thought their content are of such killer quality they can get away with such practice.
Hi Betshopboy, hehe yeah I saw that many times on some “authority” blogs. Well honeslty I think they should link with proper ancchor text, but I have a feeling the other bloggers don’t mind, as the traffic is probably massive anyway even when they use “here” or something :)
I have to make sure I put something between the > and the last
I agree with linking responsibly. There was this PR4 site that took a chunk of one of my posts, pasted it on his site and then linked to me with the anchor text “blog”.
=x
Hi SJ, humm, that ain’t cool, especially cause of suppplemental index. Maybe youcan ask this blogger to only post a short excerpt instead and ask to have a link with the right anchor text, never know :)
I’ve been guilty of this from time to time. This post is a great reminder to everyone. We just have to remember that we all want to be linked to using the proper anchor text so it’s only fair that we link to others in the same way. Nicely written.
Hi Brown Baron, thanx a lot! :)
I’ve been guilty of that too, when I started, but soon realized I wanted my links to have the right anchor text, so I started to do that on here.
Great post - and a subject that I used to spend a lot of time talking to journalists about when I used to work in publishing. I wrote a similar post on YOUmoz a while back, and would be interested to hear your thoughts (post was entitled SEO For Journalists: Linking Out
Hello Ciaran, thanx for sharing that article, will definitely read it today :) (will give you my thoughts after)
It’s a very informative post. As you say, some links don’t use keywords in its anchor text. As the result, it is not clear where you will re-directed after clicking on the link.
Hi Kersson, thanx! :)
Yep, I simply like to know where a link will take me if I click it, so I try to make it so that my readers know what to expect when they click.