Links

WHY ARE LINKS IMPORTANT?

It's great if you're talking about another blogger to link to them. It enables your readers to visit their blog and see what you're talking about. This in turn gives that blogger new traffic.

For those who are seriously into increasing their blog traffic, there is another reason why linking is important. Links help to build technorati ranking as well as increasing a blogs position in search engines.

Links will also help those bloggers you've mentioned, find there way back to you.

So it's a win-win situation all round.

HOW DO YOU LINK?

Linking can be a bit overwhelming if you're just starting out in blogging. I know it took me a while to get my head around it. If you're using blogger you'll find a link button in the page you're using to compose your message.

When composing a message, you have a choice of 2 windows. One it called "compose" and the other is called "Edit HTML". Both give you the option of linking. If you link in the compose page, your link will often look much the same as the URL you've added to the box.

Here's an example of what it looks like: http://www.lighteningonline.com/

If you use the "Edit HTML" page to insert a link you'll find the link doesn't show in your page initially. That's because there is nothing inserted between these symbols >< . If you insert whatever text you'd like to appear in your post between those 2 symbols, your link will look more like this Lightening. As you can see it gives a much neater appearance to your blog post to do it this way.

Be mindful that this will insert the link at the bottom of your text. So if you've already written the post and come back to do the links later, you will need to cut and paste that link to the place within your post that you'd like it to appear.

If you're using wordpress, you need to type the text you want to appear, then highlight that text and click on the link icon. Once you've entered the URL into the box that appears, it will turn your highlighted text into a link. I've only just learnt how to do this in wordpress. :-)

IS THAT IT?

Well, I have just learnt that the text you use for your link can be important as well. If you're discussing a topic then it's better for both you and the website you're linking to, if you include related search words as part of your link.

As an example, when I was posting about homemade playdough and wanted to link to Kate's post about homemade playdough. Instead of making the link on the name "Kate", I made the link on the words Homemade Playdough.

I can't say that I'm 100% clear on how all this linking stuff works. If you'd like to know more though, you can read what Meg has to say about linking within posts.

ONE MORE THING

Have you claimed your blog in technorati yet? Even if you're not interested in getting involved in "top blogs" and so on, it's a nice thing to do to take a few moments to claim your blog so that any links you give another blogger can count for them. It is also an interesting way to find out who else might be talking about your blog. I have found some interesting blogs via technorati when they've mentioned me or added me to their blogroll without me actually realising. If you haven't already read it, you might be interested in my Technorati for Beginners post.

If you know anyone who is starting out in blogging or would like to know more about linking, please let them know about this post. I'm trying to keep things reasonably simple so that people like me can understand and follow them. :-)