Chinese

Ok, so we all know how great it is when people link to your site. Especially people who are interested in you, or who have sites related to yours.  Those links help you build relationships with other people interested in what you’re doing – and, more importantly, in what God is doing.  If we do everything to glorify God – including blogging – then certainly we want people to praise God with us!

But a lot of people forget the value of linking out – to another site.  I don’t just mean that big long list on your sidebar, I mean links in your posts.  Links related to what your talking about, links to the site of the other person you’re talking about, a link to that article you mentioned.  Why?

1. It’s polite – when you talk about someone else or quote someone, it’s just polite to link back (don’t forget to use trackback too).
2. It builds relationships – it also helps build good relationships with other webmasters.  It may increase your network of friends.
3. Serving your readers – quality “outbound” links are an added service to your readers.  They can easily learn more about that organization you mentioned, contact that person you were talking about, or read more on the topic.  You want happy readers, right?
4. Reader trust – outbound links show that you know what you’re talking about.  It shows you have a connection to your topic, you know where to find the info.  Your happy readers now appreciate you more, and are more willing to listen.
5. Navigation – linking to your own site improves navigation; in other words, makes it easier for your readers to find what they want.
6. Search engines like it – who cares, you say?  You just wrote your blog for family and friends?  Remember what I said at the beginning.  I’m not suggesting you go for thousands of readers who were actually looking for a gambling site.  If you work with the search engines, ideally they will bring people who specifically are looking for someone like you, or looking for an article that you wrote.  That makes your visitor happy, the search engines happy, and it may increase your network of contacts – ideally to God’s glory.

Some caveats here. Don’t link too much – if you link every other word, nobody likes that.  Besides, it makes your blog look like junk, like you don’t have any content of your own.

Second, make sure your linking words make sense – this makes your blog easier to read and scan by readers, and helps search engines understand what you’re saying.  For example, don’t talk about Chinese Fire Belly Newts and then say [link] or (read more here).  Link to the words that relate – Chinese Fire Belly Newts.

You can even use a title tag to add extra words like this (hover over the link to see the title):

Thanks to the article Do Outbound Links Matter for SEO (and more)

Here are some bloggers that have been doing the outbound link thing – check them for more ideas!

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