Linking out to other blogs is an easy way to attract traffic to your own blog. You think, outbound links would drive visitors away from you site? Think again. I will show you some reasons, why linking to other blogs can help you increase your blog´s traffic.
Linking to other blogs actually helps
It not only helps your readers to find interesting and valuable information related to what they are reading on your blog, it also does help the blogger you linked to, to receive more traffic. This traffic very valuable, because people coming from your link, are interested in the content they find.
As you would only link to valuable content, that perfectly matches the topic of the post the link is in, readers who click the link to go deeper into the topic are interested in it, otherwise they wouldn´t have clicked.
Outbound links to other blogs does not directly help you with your search engine rankings, but it helps you getting more visitors. Other bloggers will try to give back the link love you gave them. Maybe in one of their next posts, they will put a link back to one of your posts which will bring in interested visitors to you. It´s just a game of give and take.
Whenever you link to another blog from yours, a trackback will show up in the comments section of the post, you have linked to.
This might get you some additional visitors to your blog, many people will click on the link in the trackback to see, what others have to say about the topic. You see, linking to other blogs can be a real win-win situation.
Link out wisely
There is some advice about linking out to another blog. Don´t just link for the links sake.
First is to really care about what you are linking to. This is not about linking to kind of a bad neighbourhood as an SEO issue, but it´s about only linking to high quality content.
Remember, that putting a link into your blog post represents a recommendation given by you. Recommending crappy content can seriously hit your reputation. Your readers trust you, otherwise they would not read your blog. Do not disappoint them by linking out to irrelevant content.
It´s about community
Basically, you should link to posts providing additional valuable informations to your readers. But don´t just stick to linking only the A-Listers in your niche. Smaller blogs do also come up with great content, and they are more probably going to take notice of your link than bigger bloggers as they are getting tons of links.
It´s more likely that the owner of a small or mid-sized blog will take the time and visit your blog and maybe leave a comment.
Also, linking to other blogs can even make your network grow. Just try to find a blog, you have never visited before and which provides content matching your topics. You´ll probably find a post there worth linking to it. If you do this in each and every post you write only once, your list of contacts will get very long, very fast. Some of these new to you bloggers may even become a regular reader of your blog. This way, you could give an incentive back to those who actively participate in your blog´s community.
This article is part of my series:
The 25 best ways to increase traffic to your blog. Please read the other 24 articles and you will definitely increase your blog traffic.
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October 17th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Yep I’m finding that often when I link out to other blogs the blogger will come and visit my blog and say hello. It’s a good way of networking in the blogosphere.
October 17th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Hi Caroline,
I´m going to have more about this in the Series to come.
October 17th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
I think that linking out is very important for small to medium sized blogs. The pingbacks that you leave at the other sites are a great way to say, “Hey - I’m out here!! If you like the stuff you are reading here, you will also like the stuff on my site.” Additionally, it is a great way to start a relationship with a fellow blogger.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Fred, thanks for stopping by. That´s exactly the point.
October 19th, 2007 at 3:06 am
Not linking out believing that it would lure away my readers was the most stupid thing I ever did. Thankfully, I am off it.
Now, the problem is : when is linking out too much? For one thing, most people love to receive links without being ready to give out. I usually avoid those sites in my links. Then there’s bad neighbourhood - I use nofollow for any site I am not familiar with(their linking patterns).
October 19th, 2007 at 5:35 am
Sumesh, too much linking is difficult. Best way is just to link, when there´s more and valuable information on the topic for your readers. If not, don´t link.
October 19th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Hey Marco interesting article, and thanks for the link!
October 19th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Part of my linking out strategy for my rapid paced blogging experiment is to offer a free blog review to anyone who asks (splogs and bad neighborhoods excepted).
I’ll also mention the blog of anyone who leaves a comment on my blog in my “link love” posts under the same conditions. I like this option better than just using the “do follow” plug-in on comments where I don’t get to decide about a site first.
So far this has worked rather well in the first 2 weeks but it will be interesting to see how it progresses.
December 18th, 2007 at 4:34 am
This is very educative. I will put it into practice.