Thinking About Linking

Links are important.



All bloggers and traditional website owners want as many incoming links as possible.



Links are good for many things.



Links on other blogs and websites will send more traffic to your blog.



Trading links with other bloggers will let both blogs share their collective visitors. That sharing of readership can be multiplied many times over with multiple cross linking of many blogs to one another.



More incoming links helps to raise your blog's ranking in the search engine results pages, called SERPs by the search engine optimization (SEO) community.



While we all know that the dominant search engine Google values links very highly, be also aware that links are part of the Yahoo and MSN Search algorithms as well.



The search algorihm is the computer calculated formula, that search engines use to determine the relevance of a web page, to a search for any words or phrases. The search terms are called keywords.



Aside: I like to let you in on these little insider terms so you can amaze and astound your friends and family. Be the trivia nerd you always dreamed of becoming.



Incoming links will raise your blog's Google PageRank. Note that PageRank is not the same as rankings in the SERPs. PageRank measures the importance of a web page on the internet based on the number and quality of its incoming links.



The SERPs measure the relevance of a page in a search for the keywords entered into the little search box.



Okay, we all know that links are important and you want to get more of them.



That's a given, although I do know of a tradtional website owner who got mad when other people wanted to link to his site. He demanded their link to his site be removed. He was afraid of people from outside of his industry reading his site. He didn't want them at his site. True story.



Great content in your blog will always attract more links. That is a fact. Bloggers happily link to interesting and informative posts. Often, they will be yours.



Enter your best posts in the various online Carnivals. For example, I send a post as an entry to Carnival of the Capitalists every week. There are many more of them for bloggers of all tastes and interests.



The many Carnivals are a tremendous technique, for displaying your best writing, to a much wider internet community. Links soon follow as a natural result.



Trading links with other bloggers is another good idea. There are some stipulations, however.



Be sure to practice good link etiquette. It is generally considered to be good manners to put a link on your own blog first, and request a return link from that newly linked blog second.



Keep that in mind when you ask for links.



Many bloggers are bombarded with link exchange requests. Many of the requests are e-mail scams. As a result, they like to see that link on the requesting site first.



Think about the rules and ideas for links and your blog will explode in link popularity.