All Entries Tagged With: "link love"

Link Love: Are You Promiscuous?

One of the blog strategies that you’ll often hear blog consultants tell their customers is to trackback to other blogs with comments that address what they are discussing. “Join the conversation” you will often hear them say. I’ve even said something similar a few times myself.

But there is more to it than merely linking for the sake of linking. You can do it too much.

You have to ask yourself some hard questions when you start to put together your link and trackback strategy. I’m not saying don’t ever do it. I’m just saying be a little discriminating.

Trackbacks are a form of marketing. You are essentially saying to the other blogger, “Hey, I’d like to dialogue with you and your readers about this topic.” It’s OK to address a topic on another person’s blog if you disagree with them on something. It’s even OK to agree with them and offer them some praise. You might think a topic is of such importance that it deserves not being passed over. And you might be right. But does it deserve a link? Do you have to trackback or are you simply trying to show someone you know more than they do?

We’ve been told countless times that trackbacks are a good source of inbound links. Not always. Some bloggers place “nofollow” tags in their comment links so you get no link juice. If that is the case then you’ll get no link quality out of your trackbacks. So why bother? There are other reasons why you might want to trackback. And there are reasons why you might not. You’ll have to decide for yourselves.

Remember this, while a trackback on another blog has the potential to deliver quality traffic to your blog from someone else’s. It also has the potential to drive traffic from your blog to theirs. It sounds crass, but just like you choose your sex partners carefully, you want to choose your link partners carefully as well. Spammers love all the attention.