You read it on almost every prominent blog: “Link to others.” Many people preach it, as if not linking to others would result in damnation in the blog world. I like linking to other sites for only one reason: I want to link to other sites because they have some interesting information related to something I am writing.
There is one situation, however, when you should avoid linking to others. If you link to others with even the slightest hope that the person you linked to will link back to you, you have probably biased your article, consciously or unconsciously, to include a link so that you can hopefully get a link back. In my view, that can be a very bad thing unless you know for a fact that such is not the case.
Sometimes bloggers hide their interest in getting incoming links behind the concept of linking to useful posts
If you link to others with the assumption that you will get a lot of benefits in return, including the benefit of being linked back, you should sit down and figure out if you are actually looking forward to the sole benefit of being linked back to by someone else. Maybe you are only linking to get links back, and you are using a myriad of other reasons, like “I’m linking to a great article” or “My readers should find out other sites too“, simply to feel better that you are not linking just to get attention.
Example: many prominent bloggers tag or link to other prominent blogs only
You can see this a lot in online memes. Many prominent bloggers tag only other prominent bloggers for different memes. Such prominent bloggers will also link only to other prominent bloggers in their blog posts. These bloggers are only linking out in order to get more links pointing to their own site. That means these bloggers care more about the concept of incoming links than the concept of sending visitors to good sites, since their visitors trust them by clicking on links pointing to other sites.
Figure out whether you will link to others if you get nothing in return
The next time you want to link to a blog or a blog post, find out if you are writing a quality article or abusing the concept of link baits, by asking yourself this question:
“If that blog never links back to me, and the blogger never visits my site, would I still link to a blog post by that blogger?”
So please tell me, my dear reader, what are would be your reasons for linking to other blogs in your blog posts?
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