Linking out is the lifebood of good blogging

A reporter yesterday told me that my posts had too many links, that it may be disruptive to people reading my blog.

I explained my position that the best blogs send people away acting as an intelligent agent on a niche topic. We, assuming I publish a good blog, turn people onto things we see and add our insight and commentary. It’s also critical to how we network with the influencers in our field.

Liz Strauss, writing a guest post at Pro Blogger, explains the importance of linking out. She calls it not being an insular blogger. Liz rightfully points out that it’s relationships you’re after by linking, not short term ‘link love’ to achieve search engine performance.

Linking out is a great strategy for attracting incoming links and traffic. Even more it’s a great way to establish quality relationships that grow as your blog does. Use this strategy to find bloggers that you will have long-lasting linking relationships with……Have a standard of quality. Write down the traits you hold as a standard and look for them before you link. If you’re want a long-term relationship, go for quality and relevance before traffic. A quality blog that’s a friend for months or years has lasting value after a spike in traffic is long forgotten.

Look for bloggers who have differentiated their blogs. High-quality, one-of-kind blogs have huge growth potential and the bloggers who run them usually have plenty of marketing savvy to share.

As a lawyer, getting your blog posts cited by influential bloggers in your field is gold. People doing research will see you via a Google search or by monitoring RSS feeds by keyword. People Googling your name during the lawyer hiring process will see others citing to you as an expert.

The best, and perhaps the only way, to accomplish such goals comes from writing about others’ content and linking to it.