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One of the most important things you will do as a blogger is building your blogging reputation to increase views. One of the easiest ways to do this is by linking other relevant blogs to your article.
Linking to an established and credible blogger isn’t enough to build your viewership. You want to drive traffic from their blog to yours. You need to be sure the blogger you link to is aware you are promoting their blog because they may choose to post a link to your blog in return. This is usually very easy and typically a mutually beneficial agreement between bloggers.
The two most important aspects of linking to an outside website are knowing what links you should provide and what blog to link to. The best way to determine this is to do your research. There are a couple things you want to keep in mind when researching blogs you’d like to feature on your own blog. Here’s a few do’s and don’ts for choosing other blogs to help build your own blog.
Reputation Do’s
Find a blog that is relevant but not in direct competition to your own. For example, if you are blogging about exercise, you may want to link out to a blog that is about healthy living. This way you will have enough material to use that will not directly reduce your own viewers.
Choose subtopics for each blog topic. Each of these subtopics is something you could probably spend an extra couple sentences elaborating on but instead of elaborating on them use them as a source for linking to other blogs. For example, if you are blogging about starting your own small business you can link out to an article about choosing the right type of HR department for your business or a blog comparing payroll platforms.
Do your research. Remember you are trying to help authenticate your authority on a subject so providing links to inaccurate or misleading information will backfire on you. Make sure you read several articles from each blogger you intend to link to. Looking to link with us? Click here!
Reputation Don’ts
Don’t validate your blog by linking to another blog that says the exact same thing. There are a couple issues here. If you are writing the same thing people may think you are plagiarizing your article and ANY similar language may give rise to questions from both readers and the other blogger.
Don’t link to another blog that covers the exact same topics either. Even if the blog offers a differing opinion you run the risk of driving your readers to another blog. Let’s say you have a bad blog day. Your post was ok but just ok. But, being the brilliant blogger that you are with a lack of full content you linked out to another article with the opposite position. Your reader is now reading a well thought out and exciting blog about economics instead (come on, you know you enjoy a good economics lesson). Next week when the same reader is looking for information on the Consumer Price Index whose blog do you think they will go to? Yours or the one that made Economics seem like game seven of the World Series?
These are just a couple of considerations when choosing blogs to help boost your own. You also want to consider style and continuity and determine whether it best suits your needs to find a blogger that writes similarly to you or if it might help to have a stylistic difference.