Posting an interesting link is a value in itself, but it really has to be interesting. Links that have been posted everywhere else are not interesting, not are links to content which has no real value itself.

However, there is one fundamental problem with links as primary content. As Darren already wrote, links don’t attract links.Good links can be good content from the perspective of your readers, but they usually are poor promotion for your own blog.

Like most of us, it started out with a friendly “links page” – just a little something extra I added to my site to list other related sites of value. Today we’d call that a “blogroll” but back then it was just a “links page”, and every site had one. Not wanting to be different, I had one too.

As time went on, I added a lot of content to my site. I mean a LOT. I worked hard at it and really made it a very useful resource for my niche. I built significant traffic and although I really paid no attention to such things back then, I started getting a lot of affection from the big search engines. Life was good.

Then one June morning in 2003, I discovered Adsense. “Cool”, I thought, “I’ll
make a couple of extra bucks from the site. Why not?” I applied, was approved, and started running ads. Cool beans, I thought.

Imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning and found $40.53 in
my Adsense account. Wow. It wasn’t millions, but it wasn’t just pocket
change either.

The next day was $51.95. There were $60.00 days, even $70.00 and $80.00
days. This Adsense stuff was great.

I wanted more.

Well, how do you get more? Obviously, more content. So I stepped up
the pace of my writing. Where I had been posting perhaps a few times a week,
I now wanted to post a few times a day. Many times a day, lots of posts,
because posts carry ads and ads mean money. Post, post, post.

But these weren’t like my my previous posts. Oh, some were, sure. But
a lot of them were just empty links: “Hey, look at this:” posts.

What was I thinking? Hours spent searching the web, often stumbling into
seedy and disreputable sites trying to find something to link to. It got harder
to find anything of interest, and my standards slipped. I’d wake up in the morning and stare bleary eyed into the mirror: “I can’t believe you linked to that”, I’d say.

But I had. I was ashamed, but I could not stop myself. Links, links and
more links. A long chain of empty posts that were really nothing at all.
My once proud site was starting to look a bit sploggish at the edges and I hated it. But the driving need for post after post after post kept me doing it.

And then..

One morning I looked in the mirror and said “No more”. No more would I post empty links. If I didn’t have useful content to add, I wouldn’t link at all. My posting frequency would suffer, but it had to be done. I had to return my site to quality standards, and I was going to do that no matter how hard it was. Cold turkey.
I was done as of that day. No more empty links.

It is hard. Sometimes I see a juicy web page that really is relevant to my niche but I have nothing to say about it other than “Look!”. My fingers hesitate, wanting to type in that href. I take a deep breath and steel myself: I will not link without additional value. I will not link without additional value. I will not link..

Well, Adsense isn’t what it used to be anyway. A good day is $40.00, and a lot of days are in the thirties. Weekends plunge even lower. It’s still nice money,
of course, but I don’t think about it as much anymore. I think about content, and value, and that’s what I should be thinking about, isn’t it?

I shook the empty link habit. You can too.

I put very brief descriptions of cool sites in my list of links. For example:

“Policy on Iran” at Last Superpower.net – Saudi Arabia, NOT Iran, next US target?

Calendar of political and activist events in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

Harry’s Place – English liberal-left site, supports the Iraq war, pro-Israel. Combination of interesting debate and entertaining abuse of some of the most persistent trolls on the Net.

I also think enormous link lists and blogrolls are a waste of time. Fewer, carefully selected links that are likely to appeal to your target audience give your site more credibility than 100 unexplained, possibly time-wasting places to visit.

I work full time so my blogging is probably going to be only one good article a week. But if my eventual readers/subscribers know that each time an article comes out it will be interesting, and packed with my original thought and work, then I think they will value my posts.

I have a perfect example of some fantastic writing by Greg over at
http://sports.crimsonlight.com

The traffis is ok, but almost no commenting. What is up with that?

Please help. He is a great writer. and comments would be great. How do we fix this?

I’m not gonna name anybody but you probably know!

Personally, I use links very sparingly and make sure they help enhance the main content, but not distract from it. I put a lot of thought and time into my content and I hope that readers see and appreciate that. Just posting a bunch of links is, in a way, cheating.

Designers who Blog (http://www.designers-who-blog.com) features … of course … blogging designers, etc … and I’ve basically been playing around with the format to see what attracts viewers. I started out quoting interesting bits to point to, no personal comments, then when I switched to waffling about the featured blogs the readership dropped so I’ve mostly gone back to my original format. Short, sweet, extracting the best about the blog itself to give a taste of the designers/photographers/marketers/etc voice if I can.

The NO!SPEC blog (http://www.no-spec.com) is a resource for those talking about spec in the design industry (as well as others) so I’m basically doing the same as DWB. I feature the conversations around with a quote, whether it’s blogs or online mags, etc.

I’m wondering about another rethink, but time is of essence here. Or rather, the lack of it. Researching, googling, dipping into different blogs, extracting interesting bits takes time. Writing about each one, even more time. Also, finding a voice suitable for the subject (which I perhaps never did accomplish before backing off), even more time.

The team blog I’m putting together will indeed have original content so there is no real fear of being a high range linking blog. But, is a linking blog all that bad? Or is it the extent of linking that is important? Or the type of linking? The way I’m looking at it, they can be quite handy one stop resources where none exist. Or if some do, are poorly updated/created/designed/etc.

One of the best design blogs is, I guess, a linking blog. No comments. Just a screen snap with a link to the blog … http://www.webcreme.com/ … so maybe there are linking blogs and … linking resource blogs?

If the post even a twinkle of a fresh angle, comment, or slant on the topic, then I say it’s all good.

-Kenny

It’s possible – but it’s difficult and becoming increasingly hard to stand out from the crowd.

What’s wrong with just finding the most wonderful mind-blowing collection of links ever known to humankind? You can bet I will add your RSS Feed into my Bloglines!

Example that pops into my head…Bank Locater

It’s only common sense and courtesy to link both the site where you found the link (heads up) and the source (via/source) .. i.m.o.

It seems to have taken me a while, but I might just be heading on the right track now…