Why do Outbound Links?

I know there are a lot of people just starting business-related blogs who come here. This blog is for you. Those of you who have been blogging for a while, can just click right past this. It's about a fundamental of why new bloggers particularly should make outbound links and often.

I've spent a good deal of time with people lately, helping them to understand the mechanic of blogging. And I talk about links and how they are really the wampum of blogging. They are what we receive for blogs well done and it's what we give to show our appreciation to other bloggers. It's how conversations spread from blog-to-blog-to-blog.

It's also how new bloggers get discovered by more veteran bloggers. Let me walk through this. You use blog search engines like Technorati and PubSub to find topics or people who interest you.  You see something you like, or better, something you want to respond to. You already know how to leave a comment.  But a better way to do it, would be to post your thoughts on your own blog, linking to the better known site. If you use a toolset that provides for it, you should also put the link (to the specific posting, not just to the blogsite) in the Trackback Box.  If you use Typepad, that box appears below and a little to the right of where I'm typing right now.

Trackback sends the other blogger a "ping," a little note that says, you've joined his conversation. It is highly likely, that the other blogger will check you out, no matter how new or obscure your blog is. If she or he likes it, they may comment on your blog or link to it in the future. Your link to the more famous blogger will also show up when someone does a search to see who's talking about that person, driving still more traffic to your site.

One more point about these links.  Every time you get one, just like every time you post a new blog, Search Engines like Google notice and elevates your standing, making you more discoverable even to people who don't blog.

This may sound complex, but actually it's quite simple.

Comments

[steven streight aka vaspers the grate]

I think the main value of outbound links is the benefit they give to readers of your blog.

You describe something, then provide a hypertext link to more information, source material, an image.

Instead of just the blog author's ideas and words, the blog readers gain access to other thoughts in the topic area.

Outbound editorial links add credibility to a blog.

When I see articles that mention companies and web sites, but no links, I think the author was lazy.

[Andy Kaufman]

Nice post. It took me a little while to get this point. When I first started, I was under the impression that outbound linking's purpose was only to refernce ideas outlined in my posts.

I'm in the midst of launching our office blog along with 20-25 agents in my comapny. None of them have never blogged before, but they're eager to learn & get started. They'll get some great insight from this post.

I'm looking forward to sharing it with them.

[Richard Dudley]

Let's talk about doing outbound links well, too! I'm pretty sick and tired of posts that read "Useful! Click this." and "this" is a hyperlink to goodness knows what. That kind of link style is useless--when I worked as tech support, I spent a long time training users NOT to click on things like that. Those kind of linkers have never had to shut an entire factory in Arkansas down so you can remotely disinfect viruses from Pittsburgh because the developers in Cleveland thought the A/V scanners slowed down their compilers. I have done so, and that was not a fun day. I'm not clicking on "this" or "here".

IMHO as a blog reader, outbound links should:

1) Be marked as to what they are. "This video cracks me up" (not to self: save that post for home in case its noisy or not something you want on the monitor when the boss walks by). "Useful VS plug-in", etc. This is a bare minimum.

2) Include a description from the destination site, if possible. "Son of Smart Part will make your SharePoint development life much easier..." This helps me filter out what I should go see, and what to skip. My time online is monitored, and so I need to conserve my outbound usage for useful things. More than once I've followed a useful tool link to find something that would be useful if I programmed C in Notepad, or something arcane like that. C in Notepad is not useful. SharePoint is.

3) If there's a title of the blog post or article, include it and make it a link. I may have already seen this, so I don't need to follow the link. This is especially true for the MSDN, ASP.NET and Technet bloggers, all of whom post the same link to the same memo everytime Bill Gates sneezes.

4) Include the URL also. This way, I can see if that blog or site is already in my aggregator, and I'll come across the post or article in my normal reading.

There's probably more, but I'll turn that into a blog post when no one's watching.

[Alejandro]

Thanks for the great article I am in the process of building back links through common methods such as site submission to directories, PR article releases, articles, and mailing lists.

[bothered]

Richard Dudley's four points in the comment above are really good ones--which often take bloggers years to figure out.