Sending readers to other blogs.
You may be wondering, “How will linking to other blogs bring users to my blog? Aren’t I sending them away?”
The answer is yes, you are sending readers to other blogs. This is a good thing! Think of it as part of the service you provide to your readers. You’re not just blathering on about something, but showing them examples, or linking them to resources or more information that they might find useful. You’re saying in words and actions that the needs of the customer are paramount.
Also, when you link to other blogs, you aren’t necessarily sending them away. One thing that I like to do in my posts is have a clicked-on link open in a new window. I do this based on my own experiences reading other blogs. When I’m looking at other blogs and following a link trail from one blog to another and sometimes even another, I occasionally get confused and close the window when I’m done reading a post. But what I meant to do was stop reading the post linked to, but continue looking at the originating blog. Too late! I followed a link and then closed the window, losing the original blog in the process.
When I write my own posts, I add a bit of html code to the link that opens the link in a new window. It’s relatively easy to do, but you do have to be willing to look at html to do it. Here it is: add this to the end of the URL in the tag: " target="_blank" (If you want more explanation, drop me an email or post a comment.)tag: (If you want more explanation, drop me an email or post a comment.)By doing this, CTBizBlogs is still there to come home to.
So now that you’ve sent readers to other weblogs, how does that help you?
That has to do with technology, blogging culture, and blogging etiquette. I’ll address this in the next post.
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September 19th, 2005 at 8:29 am
[…] I touched on the first in the previous post on reasons for linking to other blogs. […]
October 1st, 2005 at 11:11 pm
You’re right about the need to link —
but where’s you link list to other bloggers?
October 2nd, 2005 at 12:27 am
Kob,
Thanks for the confirmation. Right now I have two link lists. One is on the right sidebar — Small business blogs. The other is below the link to the Red Cross, in My Bookmarks: Blogs I read. That links to all my bloglines subscriptions.
I purposely don’t have a long list of every blog I read on the sidebar, because it’s just too long.
I’m still deciding the best way to organize these links, so if you have a suggestion, I’d love to hear it.
However, seeing your post shows me I made a glaring omission — Connecticut Weblogs. Sorry about that. I fixed it.
November 21st, 2005 at 10:31 am
[…] I’ve written before about linking to others and why that’s important (part 1, part 2). The flip side of that is that bloggers who are linked to will investigate the reference, check you out, and perhaps link to you if they feel their readers might be interested. But that’s a maybe — it’s not something a blogger is obligated to do. […]
December 5th, 2005 at 7:40 am
[…] Add links. Not all blogs have links in every post, so if you don’t have any, that’s fine. However, Google does look at links when determining page rank, so if that’s important to you, link often, but appropriately. See my post on “How does linking to other blogs help me?” […]
December 28th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
Hi I would like to add the link code to my post but am not sure exactly where to put it. I have looked at the HTML in my Blogger blog and have found this at the top of the post bit
" “> “…. is this where it goes (it seems to be the only bit with ‘December 28th, 2005 at 3:02 pm
Well, your comment got a little mangled because my blog interpreted your code rather than just displaying it.
When you have a link in a post in blogger, you can look at the HTML, and you’ll see that "a href= bit, then the URL of the site and a quote mark. Leave a space after the quote then add target="_blank" just before the closing angle bracket.
So it would look like this:
<a href="http://www.opinmind.com/" target="blank">OpinMind</a>
Click on preview to double-check. Let me know if this works for you.
December 28th, 2005 at 3:14 pm
I’ve since added a refinement, which is to add text which shows when someone puts the mouse on the link. In later posts on this blog, there’s a “tool tip” which pops up to say “opens in new window.”
That’s done the same way as the target code, using title. It looks like this:
<a href="http://www.ctbizblogs.com/" target="_blank" title="opens in new window">
December 29th, 2005 at 12:12 am
HI Sabine … Hooray, have just got the hang of the link thingey (well partly). Have managed to put the code on the entries in my “Art Links” list on my main page …. and it works!
Now all I have to do is get my head around links in my posts!
Thanks a lot … love your helpful articles!
Lesly
December 29th, 2005 at 6:23 am
Glad to help, thanks! Good luck.
May 15th, 2006 at 6:52 am
[…] Related posts on CT Biz Blogs: How does linking to other blogs help me Part 1 and Part 2 by Sabine @ 12:36 am. Filed under Blogging tips, Blogging Basics [link for this post] […]