Thinking before Linking

One of the best things you can do when you start off blogging is to reference the sources you attained your content for by linking back to their site within the post you just wrote. Main reasons you want to do this is

  1. You don’t want to fake the funk and pretend you did the research
  2. It increases the visibilty to your site to one more person who may not have visited your site.
  3. It’s the right thing to do. (Trust me – I heard it from JimiMorrisonsHead.com when I accidentally forgot)

Many of you already know about backlinking, but what many of you may not know is that you can really do your source a favor by thinking before you start linking. What I mean is that you should consider what text your linking in your post and ALSO where you are linking to.

For example, let’s say I’m writing this post about linking and I found some of my information about linking from MsDanielle’s Post on Why Links are So Important! I accomplished two things right there:

  1. I provided a link to my source.
  2. In Google’s eyes, I just strengthened MsDanielle’s Article and site because I chose to use the phrase “Why Links are So Important” to be the anchor text to her article. This will have a direct effect on her future Page Ranking Scores.

The point is that I chose to use words that had something to do with her article to strengthen the quality of her article and her site. If you wanted to just keep it basic, you could just link the word “links” somewhere in your article to her post and it would pretty much provide the same quality link back to MsDanielle. The key is understanding what is the main “theme” for the post you’re are linking to and then to use that word or phrase that captures that theme to link back to your sources post.

I’m not saying that this is the new way in blogging ediquette of linking back to sources. I’m just saying that this is an extremely helpful way to thank a source for their work. Look at how John Chow’s latest scheme of asking people to link to his site using the phrase “Make Money Online” has landed him the No. 4 spot for that phrase on Google. I hope by linking to MsDanielle’s post on “Why Links are So Important,” she will be able to rank No. 1 on google for that phrase.

And as long as I’m recommending stuff, don’t forget that I wrote a couple of posts ago about making it easier for people click on links by linking more than one word. It’s just a bigger landing strip for your user to place their mouse cursor. Don’t worry, as long as the Key Phrase is in the text, the source will still get the full Page Rank Effect.

I know that I’ve learned a lot from writing this post and that from this day forward, I’m going to be very concious of how and where I link to. I hope that this post helps blogs all over to understand the power of their backlinking and that we begin to see bloggers think before they link!