Sunday, July 31, 2005

Link think: Basic blog SEO

Links come naturally to blogs.

The constantly updated fresh content, that is a hallmark of blogs, is a magnet for natural links. In particular, other bloggers will freely link to content that interests them or their readership.

It’s not unusual to get multiple links from a blog, to more than one page of your own blog. The process is widespread among blog owners, but is rarely considered by those outside the blogging community.

A blog writer adds a fresh daily entry, commonly referred to as a post, to the blog. That post will appear on the blog’s home page. A few bloggers who read the writer’s posts, on a regular basis, will link to the unique URL of the post. That URL is called a permalink. That provides the blog with one incoming link; but wait there’s more.

The linking blog will often add a link a to the blog’s home page as well, as a form of blogging etiquette. When the fresh post scrolls off the blog’s home page, the linked post will be linked from the sending blog, as will the home page.

In effect, a post can but not always, provide a blog with two incoming links. While the sending blog post will scroll off of its blog home page too, it is sending links to two receiving pages.

The links to posts are not the only value either. If that were the case, the blog linking power would be less than what happens in the real world. The linking blog is highly likely to be themed for the same topics as the receiving blog. That common theme relationship alone provides the much sought after relevant incoming links. All of the major search engines place high value, and give high search rankings to pages that are theme relevant.

As if that weren’t enough, there is still more benefit as well. The linking blogger very often provides strong keyword rich link anchor text within the blog post too. That is a powerful and often unexpected bonus, for the receiving blog.

The clickable link, laden with some of the receiving blog’s most important keywords as anchor text, and surrounded by theme relevant content, has sent many a blog page to the top of the search rankings. As obviously natural linking and unmanipulated anchor text, the search engine algorithm gives links from within blog posts heavy weighting.

Along with receiving links from other blogs, incoming links frequently arrive at the blog’s doorstep from traditional static websites. Those website links are usually very strongly theme relevant links, as it’s rare for a website owner to link to a blog that has little theme and topic relevance.

In effect, almost all incoming links from traditional websites linking to blog content, will be theme related. As such, the receiving blog gets strong link popularity value and maximum Google PageRank transfer from the sending web page.

There is even some evidence that linking out to other theme relevant blogs and websites helps to boost your blog in the search engine rankings. Don't fall for the often spoken concern of "leaking" value from your blog. Indeed, the opposite is true. A net benefit is gained from linking out to other blogs and websites.

This linking out concept was strongly implied in the Google patent application, and is part of the development of a highly ranking hub site. A hub site features numerous incoming and outgoing links, based on a particular theme, making that blog or website a very key source of information.

As you can see, it's time to think about links.

Add some links to your blog today.

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