Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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July 18, 2007

The Key to Link Lists and 15 Focused Resource Link Lists

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 12:44 pm

About Mixing Love and Currency

Strategic Plans logo

Noticing the purpose of a list — who it serves — establishes who values it and for how much. Lists of blogs can be useful or empty. When we build one, it helps to be sure we we know our intent. Andy Sernovitz passes on a great message in his book World of Mouth Marketing, and he also said it at SOBCon07.

Mixing love and money is usually a bad idea.

The Key to Link Lists

Think about link lists. The key to offering a link list that adds value, not just noise is in its intent and usefulness to readers.

An outstanding link list offers readers

Link lists that serve readers attract relationships as well as backlinks.

A Word about Link Trains Link trains and other meme lists can offer a quick jump in statistics. However, they do this by making forced links — links that didn’t happen through the natural passing on of content. Though the intent may be generous, such meme-lists often get extended without review. They can become a list of blogs compiled to gain rank and without regard to the quality of the list.

Some lists are meant to gain backlinks, page rank or authority may garnering more traffic. Yet the traffic that comes finds a content empty list. So the traffic doesn’t stay. A blogger can start building more lists to continue getting traffic. It’s about traffic not readers. Content has gone away.

15 Focused Resource Link Lists

Resource lists are organized to offer relevant and focused resources to readers. These lists require work beyond coding to exist. Most of these lists are generated by research, formed from the opinion of bloggers, result from a test or algorithm, or are the product of a group project.

Here are 15 examples organized by type.

Group Projects

Awards and Subject Lists

Top 5, 10, 25, etc. Lists

A list of resource links with ancedotal information makes it easier for readers to find the useful bit and move on. Offering resources that make life easier is a service worth offering. Finding ways to organize the list to help readers save time is a sign of respect and service they’ll notice.

Have you seen a remarkable link post? What sort of link posts do you appreciate? Which ones get you to click away as soon as you see them?

– ME “Liz” Strauss
Can you list the reasons to Work with Liz? Too many. It’s such a good idea.





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4 Comments to “The Key to Link Lists and 15 Focused Resource Link Lists”

  1. July 18th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
    inspirationbit said

    it’s amazing how powerful and effective the lists are!
    Thanks, for the link love, Liz.

    P.S. There’s an “r” missing in “37 Souces of Inspiration” :-)

  2. July 18th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Ispirationbit!
    It is amazing how lists can quickly pass on information, if we do them well. I

    You’re welcome. I really love the list you did. Thanks for the help in getting it right there too. :)

  3. July 18th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
    Bloggrrl said

    I like how you did this. I have been wondering exactly how to organize links so that they do not clutter up a page and devalue the blog. Now, how to decline those link train offers…

  4. July 18th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Bloggrrl!
    Thanks! You’re right a little organization can make a list more useful. A links page that you keep up to date might be helpful in some cases too. Declining link train offers is getting easier if you talk of the content for your readers and links falling off at Technorati anyway. :)

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