Thursday, April 12th, 2007 by Guest

15

Free Link Love – To Get It, Give It Up!

By Mary Bowling.

Those of us who have been in the SEO biz for a while tend to want to direct and manipulate the PageRank on our sites. You know the tricks. However, things are very different with blogs and, if you want yours to rank well, you need to let go of that concept.

Blogs are all about linking freely, not just to other posts and pages within your own site, but also out to other websites and blogs.

Blogs are about sharing information and insight. They are about relationships and communities. None of these can spawn or thrive without interaction. Links are their conduit to interaction and to get links, you have to give links. Here’s how and why:

Link out

People usually find out when you link to them, especially other bloggers. This often prompts them come to your blog to find out who you are and what you said about them or about what they said. They may then comment on your blog, link back to you and/or become a member of your community. Using good keywords in your outbound link text will also help to theme your pages.

Comment on other blogs

Because of comment spam, many blogs use no-followed links. Do not let this deter you from commenting. In the sea of spam, intelligent, thought-provoking commentary really stands out and it encourages the blogger and his or her readers to not only respond to your thoughts, but to visit your website, leave their own comments and to link to you.

Use a blogroll

Find and read other blogs on your topic. Then, point links at those you respect with your blogroll. Those bloggers will be alerted to your interest and may respond in kind. There’s also been talk lately, notably by Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea, that Google may somewhat reward blogs using blogrolls.

Use trackbacks

Where enabled, trackbacks allow you to go to other blogs and link back to posts on your blog as related stories. They essentially say, “If this post interests you, you might like this one, too”. These links are valuable, even if they are no-followed, because they may draw the blogger and his readership to your blog and into your community. This may result in links and traffic.

Do follow

Some blog platforms come standard with “no follow” tags on links in the comments. While leaving these enabled does deter some spammers, it will not keep most of them away. I prefer to reward readers who leave good comments with a link, so they will return and become part of my blog community and, perhaps, link to me. If your blog links are no-followed by default, search for appropriate “do follow” plugins to disable this feature.

Use good internal linking strategies

Links between your own posts and pages should use good keywords to lead the search engines to related posts within your blog. Placing your posts into proper categories also helps to theme your post pages and your links. As your pages gain PageRank, they then share it with other pages on your blog using good link reputation.

Spread your link love around and it will come back to you. Now, get out there and give it up!

[This has been an entry for Marketing Pilgrim's SEM Scholarship contest. Keep up to date with all entries and other marketing news by subscribing to our rss feed.]


Social Media Monitoring in Just 60-Seconds. Guaranteed!

Similar Stories in: Pilgrim News | Forward: Email This Post

Share this post

Share on Twitter Share in Google Buzz Stumble This!Bookmark on DeliciousShare on FriendFeedDigg This!Share on Facebook

 

 

Similar posts you may like...

15 comments on “Free Link Love – To Get It, Give It Up!”

  1. eric hebert Says:

    April 12th, 2007 at 12:19 pm

    Karma baby, karma.

  2. Carrie Says:

    April 12th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    Great Article – I’m working on implementing some of these into my blog right now. I think – when using Word-Press – the “Do Follow” is so important – and so difficult to fix if you’re not a programmer!

    Thanks for the info!
    ~Carrie

  3. Dario Says:

    April 13th, 2007 at 6:57 am

    Recently I’ve discovered some new people linking to my blog, so I checked out their site. When they mentioned my blog, what it’s about and why they like it, it made me really glad to see that my hard work was paying off (especially because my blog is kind of new). I think The Beatles put it best with their song “All you need is Link Love”!

    Great post!

  4. Blog Linking is Different-What You Need to Know Says:

    April 23rd, 2007 at 1:47 pm

    [...] Learn why blog linking is different, and how you can get the most from it, in this article: Free Link Love-To Get It, Give It Up! [...]

  5. Blizzard Internet Marketing Newsletter » Blog Linking is Different-What You Need to Know Says:

    May 1st, 2007 at 11:15 pm

    [...] Learn why blog linking is different, and how you can get the most from it, in this article: Free Link Love-To Get It, Give It Up! [...]

  6. Recommended Reading on Link Posts and Link Love Says:

    June 2nd, 2007 at 4:12 pm

    [...] Free Link Love – To Get It, Give It Up! “Those of us who have been in the SEO biz for a while tend to want to direct and manipulate the PageRank on our sites. You know the tricks. However, things are very different with blogs and, if you want yours to rank well, you need to let go of that concept. Blogs are all about linking freely, not just to other posts and pages within your own site, but also out to other websites and blogs.” Isolating yourself and trying to keep on to your visitors for dear life is the best way to end up in isolation. Your visitors will leave whether you want them to or not even if you send them through a link jungle of internal links. Internal links are highly useful if you have enough complementary content, but to open your blog to the world you need to connect the two and that is exactly what external links can do for you. The Ultimate Guide to Getting Lots of Link Love “Good link love, bad link love, do we really care who links to us? A savvy blogger would say yes and no. Based on the 80-20 rule of business – 80% of your traffic will come from only 20% of your links (by my stats, it’s less than 20%).” The Pareto Principle is probably right on the money here as well, but it has the problem that you most often cannot tell which 20% will be the best over time and that you wouldn’t be able to get the 20 best percent without the rest. If you get 80% or more of your traffic from 20% or less of your links are you in my mind focusing to narrowly and should be looking to put your link eggs in more baskets to make you less vulnerable. Hence, the more links the merrier and this link post is a great starting point. [...]

  7. BlackWyrm Says:

    July 3rd, 2007 at 8:17 pm

    Great post. Link Love is the answer. I’m always open to link exchanges, participate in blogrolls, try to comment in as many blogs as I can, and, if I like someone’s blog I put a link to it on mine. Some link you back, some not. And I’m getting quite good results doing so. In a month, my Alexa Rank has changed from 6,542,661 to 1,351,896 and in Technorati 23 people have favorited my site and my “authority” is now 28. So I’m going to continue my “Link Love Policy” :)

  8. Blog Tip: Create a Link Post in 3 Seconds « Internet Duct Tape Says:

    October 3rd, 2007 at 7:45 pm

    [...] The SEO reasons to link out [...]

  9. World Search Live .com Says:

    October 6th, 2007 at 8:15 pm

    Thought you’d like to know …. this page is in the number one position on google for the search term: “free link post”! Good job on the rank and the great articles. :-)

  10. Ram Says:

    October 28th, 2007 at 10:22 am

    “Do Follow” is the news to me. What you wrote make sense. I moderate the comments anyway. So, it is better to make my wordpress blog as “Do Follow”. Thanks for the useful tip!

  11. DrugTest.org Says:

    January 2nd, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    Great article! I have found also that by creating a topic that pertains to a heavily searched category and offering free advice can tend to yield decent link bait. Take for instance how to pass a drug test with common items found in your house. Good starting point… :)

    Jason
    Glendale

  12. Realsubliminal.com Says:

    March 13th, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    Great stuff, we are implementing all of this stuff now and really learning just how important 1 way links are – probably more important than the onsite optimisation! Great simple advice! Thanks!

  13. Dexter | Techathand.net Says:

    March 19th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    But Do follow.. seems to have some problem in SEO. Do you have any suggestion on how to overcome this.

  14. chetan Says:

    July 6th, 2008 at 11:50 pm

    You are right linking with other blogs is important not only to gain page rank but also to gain traffic and relationship with other blogger.
    More tips at:
    http://www.blogoninja.com/13/linking-in-blogs.htm

  15. Abraham van der Linde Says:

    May 22nd, 2009 at 2:10 pm

    Hi,

    Great info, mind if I link to this?

 
Cloud Computing & Cloud Hosting by Rackspace