I "tweet" interesting links and useful information only. Can't believe it? I’ve decided to ditch the top 10 articles roundup for 2 reasons: 1. most of the times it’s actually difficult to find something worth reading and linking too (and I do monitor almost 200 blogs) and 2. more than half of them don’t give a trackback, making this useless as a link building strategy. Since it’s a waste of my time and link “love”, I’ve decided to use Mondays for something better. Since my dissatisfaction with their content won’t make too many bloggers change their involvement, in the end it’s a subjective thing (what I find to be a lousy article might be excellent for others), I’d like to share my views about what a decent blogger should do when someone is linking to their article.
1. See where the link is coming from.
I’ve had people steal my articles and link to my original, I’ve had “scrappers” steal my content. The links were a good way for me to track them down and not stop until they’ve either deleted the stolen content or had their site suspended.
Since most of the time links come from good blogs who just liked my article and maybe decided to place it in a roundup, I go to step 2:
2. Accept the trackback
If a decent blog is linking to me, it’s only fair to share the link love and accept their trackback. This is how we “network”, this is how I show my appreciation for them noticing my article and recommending it to their own readers. If it was pretty nice for me to see my link in their article, it’s only fair to return the “service” and provide them with a working trackback.
Something others don’t do, because they’re so interested in SEO and getting as many links as possible while not linking to anyone, they forget the most important aspect in blogging: SHARING good content. If I find a good article and wanted you guys to see it too, believe me I don’t care about sending a DO FOLLOW link to them, I care about giving you the chance to read an excellent article. But not all people care about their readers, some count the links in and links out and make sure the difference between the numbers is as big as possible.
3. I might even say thank you
Most of the time, when someone links to my article, it makes me pretty happy. It means I haven’t wasted my time with that content and that my ideas “moved” someone. After approving their trackback, I’d also visit that blog and reply to the article, saying thanks and making sure I can add something useful too. I love it when people come here and comment, I love it when people I’ve linked to discover my article and say “hi” so, if I like this, it’s only fair to do to others what I like them do to me.
So, stop being so strict about links and share the “love”. If you have someone link to your article, be happy about it. Approve their trackback and say thank you. You’re not alone in this business and, believe me, you’ll have more success from being open and fair, than being a link nazi. Little by little people who used to link to your good articles will get tired of seeing you have no reaction and will start ignoring you. Instead of having links coming to your articles on a weekly or even daily basis, you’ll just have few visitors and commenters and that’s it. But at least you can know you’ve done a marvelous SEO job, that only search engines would care about your articles, since you drove your readers away.
I have to say, I loved the “link nazi” reference. The link nazi fad is only a couple of years old, and I attribute a lot of it to Google. Google publicizes PageRank, which a lot of webmasters believe is only affected by links. A lot of webmasters also believe that PageRank is the most important, if not the only, factor to search engine placement, leading a lot of well-meaning webmasters to be link greedy. Google effectively eliminated their primary goal in what they do. They “say” they want to encourage good-faith linking, but in essence, by publicizing PageRank, something I hope will completely go away, they create the shady practices they have been trying to discourage.
I completely agree, and I too like to share the link love and form a relationship with people reading my posts, leaving me comments, and linking to my posts, as you did on the blog I am currently still building, Freelance Water Cooler. I think that is a good way to form relationships with other professionals and bring back good faith linking and blogging practices.
Freelance Water Cooler´s last [type] ..Google PageRank Problems- Patent Will Expire- Become Non-Exclusive
fantastic advice .. i really try (badly sometimes) to keep up with the feedback of any type. i’ll need to research some of the finer points you mention and put them into practice .. cheers alan
tbaoo´s last [type] ..they said what
For most of the my sites that use blogging and get scraped I try to have at least one link to my own site within the post so that the scraper site is at least linking back to my site, which hopefully will tell Google that I have the original post. I’ve pretty much given up on trying to get them to take down any content after getting ignored every time when I first started blogging.
Ryan @ Milwaukee Condos´s last [type] ..Contact
Good post. Too many people have too many misunderstandings about SEO. Cross-linking (as generated by accepting a track-back) does not hurt SEO. It does not help ranking (not page rank, but actual SERP) as much as a one way link (no link back to the person who mentioned your article or site), but it does help.
And, you point out the most important thing that most people forget – the point is to get actual people to your site – that’s why we try to rank higher in search results. Linking does that first hand – from one site to another… and, will result in a better quality of visitor in a lot of cases.
Fred @ Internet Business´s last [type] ..Barney Fife Chases the SEO Bandits at JC Penny
This is excellent advice. You don’t always know the motivation behind linking to your blog or whether or not proper credit has been given. I think the tip about accept the trackbacking is a good idea, as it is a way to network. As is the tip about actually saying thank you! We could all stand to loosen up a little and politeness goes a long way. You can have a great message but if you’re known to be rude, it won’t go very far.
I would the same if someone linkback to me, but I cannot find it because my WP is shows error on inbound links. Any ideas?