The Right And Wrong Ways to Link
Linking is big business for all bloggers. After all we all want to have plenty of incoming links to rank better in search engines. And for those of you who think that linking to a competitor the right way is damaging for you, think again.
Not many bloggers actually have the knowledge on how to rank well for any chosen keyword. Their futile attempts of getting better placement with Google is often lost because many parts of the equation are missing.
For starters, to rank well not only do we need to use keywords well, but we also need plenty of incoming links that count. If you link to another blogger with the words click here or read more here or Monika wrote this, you are not doing this blogger a favour. Unless of course you are spammer and don’t give two hoots.
Likewise if others link to you this way you won’t get credit from the search engines for any keywords except the crappy (link here version). To climb the ranks of Google you need valuable incoming links which use your chosen keyword as a hyperlink. If the site linking to you is in a related field and carries some page rank, then even better for you.
This is very important and gets overlooked by most bloggers all around the net. It is time that we start linking the right way to others just as we would prefer ourselves. By giving more than hoping to receive, we will get back tenfold. But not only that, bloggers will slowly learn how to link to others properly instead of using crappy hyperlink text.
Just to make this clear, if you were to link to my Manifesto blog I would prefer that you use “Freelance Writing” as the hyperlink since that is the keyword I’m targeting to rank in Google.
If you are not sure what the blogger you are linking to prefers, you can always ask or get clues by reading his/her posts.
It also helps to use your preferred keyword when making blog comments. I used to write Monika @ The Writers Manifesto Blog but had to change this since I realized how important it is to try to rank for a keyword. Now people everywhere know me by this name which is ok for me as a person but does nothing at all for my rank.
Never mind, I have learned my lesson and I hope you have learnt yours too.
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Well said Monika. I will definitely keep this advice in mind when linking
Thanks Andrew,
It is good to spread the message since we will all benefit from this in some ways. Thanks for your input, I always love to see what you guys think about the topics I write about.
Excellent advice Monika…
So on that note, what anchor text would you like me to use when I link to this article from my site?
Hi John,
You can either use “how to hyperlink” as per post URL or better else use “WordPress” since that is part of Gobala’s blog name and a popular keyword.
Normally linking to the name of the post will help to rank that keyword better, but this only really works if the post is highly SEO optimized which mine wasn’t. If I was to write a SEO strong post I’d use keywords a lot more frequently and then linking to the keyword itself would be beneficial.
Since Gobala hasn’t identified any keywords for this blog on the “source” I’m not whether and which keywords he targets and the obvious choice would be “WordPress”.
Hope this helps
Well explained Monika.
I mostly never realise about the demerits of mistakes during linking. Will have to keep points in mind when linking to a website.
Chetan
Great article Monika - I hadn’t thought about the linking aspect in the way but am pleased to note that I have done similar to what you suggest most of the time. Perhaps it’s common sense, but as is often the case, not many people think about it or use it!
Thanks Kathie,
Yes I agree with you, linking is in some ways common sense in in others SEO for the person you are linking to.