Blog posts: Linking to your own postings

Blog posts are often written with your previous posts in mind.



Many bloggers consider self referencing your own posts to be anywhere from unethical, to egotistical, to lazy, to many other things besides.



Sometimes, linking to your own posts is even helpful to your readership.



I admit it. I link to my own posts all the time.



Go ahead. Say it.



You do it it sometimes too.



Well, okay. It wasn't that bad was it?



In fact, if done judiciously, linking to your own previous posts is a good blogging practice. Referring to a past post (I like that alliteration) provides background to the current post.



For political bloggers, for example, linking to information and thoughts on an issue can follow up prior ideas as news becomes available.



Law and sports are also obvious uses of self linking to what had been discussed before.



Business bloggers can follow up ongoing projects and ideas, simply by referencing the initial and intermediate stages of an activity in production, sales, marketing, or public relations, to name just a few.



For search engine optimization, the additional internal blog site link adds link power to the receiving page in two ways.



First of all, an added link, even from the same site, helps raise a site's ranking in the search engines. All search engine ranking calculations, called algorithms, value links from one page to another. Yahoo and MSN Search like them. Link obsessed Google adores them.



Secondly, the referring link will be, by definition, on the same topic. Theme relevant links are also highly desirable in the search engines. Even links from the same site or blog are rewarded by the search engines.



It's not egotistical or bad manners to self reference and self link.



In fact, it's helpful for both your readers and for the search engines.



Of course, it helps to be a bit lazy at times, as it often pays off. Okay, I should never have said that.



Even if all of the reasons for self linking, good and bad are true, and they are, the good outweighs the bad many times over.



I definitely recommend the practice of self referencing and adding internal blog links.



Often.



Well, at least occasionally.