Take every pro-blogger out there and all will say the same thing: “Write link posts!” What are the reasons behind such an advice? Why would you send people away from your blog? Stop. I truly hope you did not just ask yourself that!

Writing link posts is definitely not about sending people away, but rather about guiding your users to even more wonderful content and letting other bloggers know you appreciate their work, just as you would like yours to be appreciated.

But just like with almost any other type of blog posts, there are some things you could do to make it GREAT instead on a simple or even a good link post.

1. Find new content

If the article or information you’re linking to has already been linked to by the most important/influential bloggers in your niche, there’s a good chance yours will only add noise and not value. The “new” factor will be lost, and with it, your readers’ attention.

2. Find relevant content

It’s always best to keep the links close to your blog’s main topics if you’re blogging in a niche. General blogs or news blogs could make exceptions, but most times your readers will need and look for more information in the same area of interest.

3. Find useful content

The best content is the content that satisfies the reader’s needs. May it be the need to engage in a conversation on a controversial topic or the basic need for help/advice, the posts you link to have to have the quality of being useful to your readers, and who knows them better than you?

4. Offer content previews

Whenever possible, offer a short excerpt from the article you link to, just enough to give users an idea of what to expect from the link they’re about to click. Keep your excerpt short though, to avoid unnecessary conflicts or duplicate content issues.

5. Add your own comments

Your followers respect and read you for your views and opinions. Give them the chance to find out what you think and feel about the link you provide in a small, descriptive paragraph. This way, you’ll gain both a new link for your post, and also make it “readable”, instead of “clickable”. Together with point 4, this easy-to-do thing keeps readers on your page for a little while, which is always good for statistics, user engagement and why not, ad exposure.

2 Bonus tips:

a. The bigger, the better

The more links you provide the better, BUT, always respect the five tips above. It doesn’t matter if you link to 5 or 500 articles, quality of links should be top notch. Collection posts have a good success rate on social media as users look for a place where they can find all the info they need on a certain topic.

b. Use contextual links

Whenever possible, try not to use “Read the article here” or “Read more” link. Use contextual links, like “Check out these (start link)10 amazing free WordPress themes(end link)”. Helps readers identify the information easier and also, the bloggers you link to will appreciate it even more.

Writing a great link post is not that hard as long as you follow these easy tips. It’s finding the right content to link to that’s harder, and that’s what you need to go and look for yourself!

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It’s hard to keep up with the blogosphere, being such a dynamic environment. Great content gets published every single minute, and sometimes, we miss the best things because they get buried deep in a long list of feed updates.

Here’s a list of link that you should not have missed these days:

Reader Blog Critique on BloggingTips.com

Kevin Muldoon of BloggingTips.com has recently started a blog project called Reader Blog Critique. The community response it’s amazing. Bloggers have a good chance of understanding their own blogs from their readers’ perspective and to improve whatever needs improvement.

Could an Ad-Free Blog Work?

According to Tibi Puiu from LostArtofBlogging.com, it can. Tibi explains Why An Ad Free Blog Rocks, covering topics like: advantages and disadvantages of classic monetization and alternative methods of earning a living through blogs. A great, extensive, worth-reading article.

Blog Action Day 2008

This year’s topic on Blog Action Day was Poverty. On October 15th over 12,000 websites with an estimated audience of over 13 million readers published a post about poverty. Amongst them CopyBlogger.com, ProBlogger.net, DailyBlogTips.com, SkellieWag.org, Guardian.co.uk, Lifehacker.com, HuffingtonPost.com, FreelanceSwitch.com and many, many more.

Stories That Sell

That’s what Brian Clark of CopyBlogger.com teaches us, by publishing a guide on How to Write a Story That Sells. It’s a well written and filled with examples article that you definitely should read.

More Worth Reading Stories

• Authority Versus Pure SEO by Chris Garrett
• The Price of Closing Comments on Old Posts by Lorelle VanFossen
• How to Choose Categories for Your Blog by Ali Hale on ProBlogger.net
• Search Engine Traffic and Not-so-New Blogs by Steven Snell
• 10 Ways to Improve Navigation in WordPress by John Pratt on HackWordpress.com

Enjoy reading and writing great content! If you’ve recently published an article that you’d like to get included in a “link share” post, do drop me an email.

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It’s been a while since the last link-share post, but, I’ve decided to revive this series and post whenever interesting things happen in the blogosphere. So, here’s what’s new and interesting lately:

SmashingMagazine.com recently published two excellent blogging related articles. The first one is a great usage guide of magazine style themes, with pros and cons. If you’re looking to start a blog, then, their latest article which is a review of ten blogging platforms will help you make the right decision software wise.

As a more targeted alternative to 45n5.com’s Top 100 Blogs, David Peralty of xfep.com launched a new top for blogging blogs called Uber Blogs. David promises to update the list weekly and at the moment you can also easily suggest new entries through a simple form at the end of the list. I have a good feeling about this project, congrats David!

“Are you trustworthy?” is what Sonia Simone asks us on Copyblogger.com. She provides an interesting take on probable the single thing that all bloggers have in common, the need to gain the trust of their audience.

Problogger.net recently hosted a guest post from Mitch of Technipages.com. If you’re looking/hoping to join a blog network, then you should pay attention not to make any of the mistakes nominated in his article: “8 Reasons Why Your Blog Might Not Be Accepted Into an Ad Network”

On BloggingTips.com, Yuwanda Black publishes a very helpful article for freelance writers, guiding them through the preparations for a busy season.

If you’re a FriendFeed fan, then Jimmy Atkinson of WHDb.com has prepared a list of over 40 apps, widgets and plugins for you to tweak your FriendFeed.

And that’s about all for now, but the series will come back as soon as more interesting articles get published across the blogosphere.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

It’s time once again for a SEO Sunday special, dedicated to links, link building, tips and good practices of linking. It is a known fact that links pointing to your blog are meant to increase its value, not only in the eyes of search engines but also when it comes to authority measuring services like Technorati.

Links are a great tool to increase you search engine ranking and your blog’s visibility, but only when the link building is done smart. Sometimes, people that heard about the importance of link building are willing to do whatever it takes to gather as many links to their websites and blogs as possible, and this is potentially damaging their rankings. So, before going any further, I’ll tell you some things that you should stay away from.

Bad link building practices

More and more link building services are promoted on forums these days. I’m sure that many of you have come across those “1000 directory links for $10″ topics. Well, some people have to make a living, and that’s not to blame, but before paying for such services you should consider a few things.

Most sellers state that links are placed in directories with page rank varying from 2 to 6/7. In most cases, this is only partially true, as that page rank value is only met on the directory’s home page and not on the actual page where your link will be placed.

Further more, these service provider will most likely submit your blog using the same title and description or at most with 2 small variations. Why is this bad? Because out of nowhere, 1000 links to your site, all containing the same information will pop up in search results. How does that sound? That sounds a bit like spam to me, so be careful with it. Link farms don’t work!

Another thing to avoid is buying or selling links through link market websites. These websites have a bad record with Google and have been penalized since their services are seen as a threat to Google’s policy about natural, relevant backlinks. So, if you care about being in Google’s grace, search engine rankings and page rank, think twice before using them.

Whenever you want to buy a link, make sure it stays between you and that website’s owner and also learn as much as you can about his website’s history and previous practices. Also, if you’re going to buy directory links, make sure you study the offer well. No serious provider will offer a good service for such a low fee. Link building through directory submissions can have positive results if managed well.

Link building: Reciprocal links

Reciprocal links are a common practice between start-up bloggers. These have less value than one way links but still can be very helpful under some circumstances. Reciprocal links ease the spider’s circulation and the page rank transfer when encountered between blogs that activate in the same niche, approach the same topics.

Link building: One way links

One way links have a stronger SEO value because they are considered more natural. Getting one way links to your blog from pages that display relevant content and also have high page rank are certain to give you a boost in search engine rankings.

If we’re talking about 100% natural links, there’s basically no way that you could control where these non-reciprocal links come from. You cannot pick the page rank or the anchor text, but still, there’s one thing you can do.

Write good quality posts as they are more likely to attract the interest of higher authority blogs and websites and so, pass some of their search engine trust to you.

Link building: Deep linking

Deep linking is one highly important factor when it comes to link building. It does not only add to the total number of link backs to your blog, but also contributes to traffic levels and increases spiders’ interest in your content, making it more likely for them to index it faster, give it more importance and check back more often to rebuild their cache.

Link building without considering deep linking is meant to fail. Again, great content is one powerful tool to attract such links.

More good linking practices

Consider building a strong internal linking system. Make sure you use relevant anchor text whenever linking to you own post. Do so to ease up spiders’ discovery and navigation through your blog.

Also, if you’re one of those link-love givers, at least do it right. Take 5 more seconds to add at least a relevant title to that external link if not a good anchor text. It costs you nothing but helps the receiver a lot. After all, that’s what link love is supposed to be about, a way to show appreciation.

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Many interesting posts out there since the first Link Share Special episode. Enjoy them:

• More Wildly Sticky, Successful and Outstanding Blogs on Blogging
  Blogsessive made the list of 20!
• Finding Profitability – The Tipping Point for Expansion
• Don’t get stressed about blog scrapers stealing your content
• Why You Shouldn’t Care About Traffic
• How to Become a Better Web Content Writer
• Drawing More Readers with Inspiring Aspirations
• Are Your Ad Prices Too High?
• Ars Technica Joins Wired, Reddit
• The Problem With FriendFeed(ing): It’s Not Twitter
• Guy Kawasaki Interviews Darren Rowse (ProBlogger)

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Social bookmarking, social networking, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, everybody’s talking about them. Every known blogger is telling you how important it is to build a strong social media profile, how you can hit the jackpot of receiving thousands of visitors every day through submitting your articles, or having your articles submitted by your readers to the above mentioned websites, and many others.

Well, social networking is obviously useful and helpful; just don’t get your hopes up. You’re probably wondering why I’m writing this post, when only a few days ago, one of my posts has received a lot of love from social media websites. The answer is simple: While StumbleUpon sent a few thousand visitors to that article, another website (Reddit) did what it lately seams to be doing best.

Introducing link hate

No matter how important your article might be – you could be Jesus on your second coming, talking about the real Judgement Day – the first reaction you’ll see to your post is a few down-votes. This is the tricky part, you know you’ve written a good post, and when checking your Google Analytics you see no visits from that social media site. If so, why the negative response?

Look no further, link love is DYING! Who are you? Just another new kid on the block, trying to share your views with the rest of the world! You’re simply naive if you’re thinking you’ll make the front page through those easy-as-1-2-3 steps every website is talking about. Social media has long time ago transformed into a huge traffic provider, and where there’s traffic involved, so are money, lots of them.

It’s enough to scan some of the biggest forums and see those offers of over 1000 stumbles for only $10, and they are only the small fish of the industry. Sharks are a lot more savage! That’s the way things go when you’re a newcomer. Don’t expect link love, because some people can take your articles down, only to make sure their submission have a clear path to the top.

By now you’re probably thinking how come post from Smashing Magazine, TechCrunch or other famous websites hit the front page regularly. Don’t. They have the big bucks to spend on advertising, you probably don’t. They have a huge reader base, you probably don’t. They are famous and you’re probably not. It’s as simple as that.

Then, what else is there?

So, what can you do? Focus! Focus on being better. Focus on keeping your reader base close and on growing it. Don’t ignore the social media, as it’s still a good way to tell the world: I’m here, I exist and I have something to good say. But don’t expect the Holly Grail out of it!

If you’re looking for link love, make friends, good, close friends. If you’re looking for traffic, have your wallet near. Otherwise, you’ll probably get link hate.

Photo credits to Ayhan Yildiz.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

What can I say, I have a thing for series, so, here goes another one! I’ll keep it short and simple with the latest intresting things I’ve seen/read online:

1. The 100 oldest registered .com domains
2. Rubiqube’s WordPress 2.5 review (very interesting and comprehensive)
3. 8 Addictive Habits of Bloggers
4. 10 Articles All Bloggers Should Read (in case you’ve missed it – 2007)
5. The Five Components Of A Great Linkbait
6. How To Show That You Are Serious About Blogging
7. 10 Things To Do To Help Your New Blog

That’s it for this week. Enjoy your reading!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive