Last week, I wrote - granted, tongue in cheek - a post called How to avoid negative comments which looked at the problem of companies which are reluctant to blog because they feel that they will open themselves up to an avalanche of negative comments.

Another concern that I often experience (rather than hear expressed) is a reluctance to link to other websites and blogs from posts. Creating links which go away from your blog somehow seems contradictory in many people’s minds. I think that this comes from the idea that linking out means losing something, whether that be visitors (and by implication potential customers) or “Search Engine Power!” as it were, in terms of Page Rank.

Difference of Approach

It’s true that perceived wisdom online has always suggested that once you have a potential customer on your site, you should direct them to do one thing and one thing only … get them onto the page where they can buy from you! This is exactly the right approach on sites which are set up with direct selling in mind – however, that isn’t the case with most blogs.

Personally, I consider that there are 4 key things we are looking to encourage visitors to our blog to do – Read, Reply, Return & Recommend – as I explained in The 5 R’s of Better Business Blogging. If I had to pick a single goal for a blog, I think that it would probably be to get visitors to return and become regular readers. By fostering and developing these relationships, sales will still be the likely result if that is your end goal.

Informing and Supporting

The blogosphere works on different parametres from most other websites. It thrives on links & connections and those blogs which create those outbound links will tend to thrive with it.

Linking is carried out for three principal reasons:

1. referencing and connecting to sources of information as part of the support and corroboration that you are providing for one of your posts;
2. as a general recommendation of other blogs as excellent sources of information;
3. as a way to help readers follow an ongoing discussion or topic by following the links between blogs carrying on that “conversation”.

So, as you link out to other blogs, you lend greater relevance and credence to your own. At the same time, you are encouraging others to look at and hopefully reference your own blog - trackbacks in addition to links in the body of your posts will help this.

Creating Community / Network and Value

Every time that you link out, instead of giving away or losing value, you are in fact gaining it. In the process, you are creating a mini resource in your area of expertise which will in turn help to generate a community or network around it with you and your blog at its centre.

The links that you provide help your readers to discover more about the subject matter as well as follow and track discussions that are going on. They will use your blog as their start point for their investigations because they trust the information and the links that you provide – effectively you become their online directory and general resource in your specialism. You become THE person to go go to for them.

And, if you are worried that you are making it easy for them to find other authors on the subject, then don’t. With Search Engines, they would find these articles anyway - however, by helping them, you are in fact strengthening your position, as you are providing them with a resouce and network which they will keep returning to.

Conclusion

So should you just link to everyone? Well, no. The quality of links that you provide and the sources that you refer to reflect on you. Equally, there is no point linking just for the sake of it - your blogroll of sites is likely to show your general recommendations so keep the links in your posts relevant to the subject that you are writing about.

Above all, never worry about linking to other sites that you wish to recommend or refer to - you will find that just as you link to other blogs, others will link to you because your writing and blogging ethos merits it. What goes around, comes around - in a good sense!

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