Hyperlinks are what make the web world go ’round. Google measures not only your inbound but also your outbound hyperlinks and "grades" your site on how many your site is included in on the web.
Over the past year, I’ve created lots of outbound links on my books’ blog Beyond Niche Marketing and unfortunately, many of the outbound links I made were not reciprocated. Keep in mind that these are links to OTHER blogs… so it’s not like these inbound links are a mystery to the blog owner.
There are a lot of reasons why people don’t share the link love. Some just don’t know how, while others are operating from a "scarcity" mentality. If you haven’t been sharing the link love, I’m going to tell you why you should begin doing so.
Link love is ESSENTIAL to garnering traffic for your blog. It’s not just Google that likes to see links to your blog. Technorati uses these incoming links to measure your blog’s "authority". The idea is that the more incoming links you have, the more "respect" your blog deserves.
One way to generate link love is to comment on other people’s blogs. You leave a comment and when other bloggers arrive, looking for their own link love, they find your blog and leave a comment to get some link love of their own. Of course, it’s up to YOU whether you approve those comments or not.
Some blogs are set up so that there is a "no follow" attribute on comments. That means, if you’re looking for link love, you’re going to have to comment on blogs who have installed a special plug in to disable this alarming feature.
There’s a movement worth noting in the blogging community known as The U comment I follow movement.
For an example of how linking helps traffic, let me walk you through how I found this movement:
I signed up for Google Alerts on the term Niche Marketing. Now, when Google sees a page dealing with "Niche Marketing" it sends me an alert and gives me the URLs. Not only do I find blog fodder using this service, I also find out when someone is talking about my book, Beyond the Niche.
Google alerted me to a post at Digg….5 Steps to Niche Marketing Success
Which led me to this post: Internet Marketing 2.0 My D List
Each of the blog’s referenced above are going to see an inbound link in their dashboard (if they’re using Word Press). Hopefully, they’ll show some link love back… but if I just take a moment to comment on the blog, I’ll be able to create my own link love as well!
As a result, my blog’s "authority" ranking will rise, as will theirs. Which means that when other Technorati users see that I’ve shown link love… they’ll be more likely to respond…. and so the story goes…..
If you use a Word Press blog, then you’re in an ideal situation to know when you’ve been shown link love, so you can respond in kind. Remember, when it comes to link love… the more you give, the more you get. So spread it around.
Want to generate link love from here to your blog? I’ve installed the Do Follow plug in…. so feel free to grab the love!
You have been added to the DList.
Thank you for stopping by and sharing the love.
Gotta love people willing to share the link love! I do think you’re right about not everyone being savvy enough to understand how to reciprocate, much less being aware that you’ve sent traffic their way.
I must admit spending too much time some weeks, and not enough others, sifting through the AWStats logs and Google Analytics reports. It can get a bit mundane or disheartening (worst case). Other times, it’s a warm fuzzy feeling when you see inbound links out of the blue.