Linking Archives - Successful Blog

What Makes a Link-Worthy Blog?

July 24, 2012 by Guest Author 3 Comments

by
Tara Hornor

What Does Link-Worthy Mean?

When creating a blog, it is essential for the content on the blog to be link-worthy. What does link-worthy even mean? It’s a standard you should consider for every single post â link-worthy means that your content is good enough that site visitors would want to bookmark your page, share with friends, or use as a reference piece on their own blog. It means that your blog will build a great amount of backlinks, and thereby increase its visibility online. When people link to you, your site receives many benefits from added social credibility to search engine boosts and more.

To ensure that your blog and its content are linkable, focus on writing about topics that truly interest you as well as your visitors. Some people dive right in to creating a blog without focus and then end up short of the success they hoped for because they were not fully dedicated to a specific topic or niche.

Key to Link-Worthiness: Passion

Starting with a topic you’re passionate about will help you to keep your blog up-to-date with quality content — content to which others will create backlinks. If you love a topic or know a whole lot more information than other people know, use that to your benefit and write about the topics you love and know best. In doing so, you are teaching what you know and sharing your passion about it. Offer content that is informative and useful that connects your passion to others, and people will be linking to you.

So make sure you love what you write about first and foremost. This will drive the rest of the content generation and energy behind your blog. When you’re excited about a topic, you’ll go the extra mile to make the post amazing.

Always before you hit “Publish,” ask yourself, “Is this the kind of resource that I would want to revisit?” If not, what’s missing? What extra bit of information would take it over the top? Now go add it to your post!

Setting Your Blog Up for Success

When your blog is set up in a professional manner, you are more likely to have success. The following is a list of a few aspects you need to consider:

Choose a domain name for your blog that is professional, catchy, and easy to remember.
Choose a blog layout or template that matches up with the content and is visually appealing.
Offer only original content on your blog. nIf you quote someone be sure to link to their work.
Write with a friendly and conversational vioce because that is what people tend to look for.

Promoting Your Link-Worthy Blog

Other people are the most important part of helping you build a blog that is linkable. Many well-established blogs already have strong readership. Owners of these popular blogs know to look around to see what other bloggers have been saying about them. If you are write about them and link to their work, you can easily get noticed by these bloggers and sometimes in return, they may link to you. This means more success for you because links from established bloggers often carry more google juice which can raise your visibility and help you to become more established too.

Guest blogging is also an ideal way of building a link-worthy blog. As a blogger, you can offer to guest blog on other well-established blogs and instead of being paid, you can ask that the blogger link to you. That link back will ultimately help you establish credibility with search engines and increase traffic to your blog. With more traffic, you will find people who are following your blog on a daily basis because they are so interested in what you have to say.

So how do you make sure that your blogs are link-worthy?
Do you have a specific set of ideal pieces of content you always try to provide?

Author’s Bio:
Tara Hornor writes about marketing, advertising, branding, web and graphic design, and desktop publishing for PrintPlace.com a company that offers online printing for print marketing media. Find her on Twitter as @TaraHornor .

Want to be a better blogger? Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Strategy: How to Get Maximum Benefit from Complex Link Lists

June 28, 2007 by Liz Leave a Comment

More Than What One Link Shows

Yesterday I offered a list of blog promotion guides that are current and relevant. One could get lost, overwhelmed, or just plain bored going through all of the links contained inside the 20 of them.

Yet, it’s good practice and a great exercise to know the territory . . . to have an overview of the range of techniques and tactics folks suggest, support, and champion. Having an efficient way to cull through such a list can save time and help us see more than just what each link has to offer on its own.

Here’s how I’d use that list and any complex link list to get maximum benefit.

Look over the list, before you read. What do you notice about the titles? What do you notice when you quickly click each link without reading a word? What do you predict you will find when you look further?

Read through the list with an eye to the playing field. How many bloggers say the same thing? What ideas are entirely new? Note ideas that interests you.

When you finish, reflect on your predictions and note the unexpected things you found.

Decide which strategies work well with your blog and your readers’ needs.

Make a plan for how you’ll introduce new ideas in a way that won’t disrupt what you already do.

We often do what our friends do to solve our problems. Those answers can serve us well, be all right, or not work at all. It’s so much stronger to arrive at a plan with the longer view — knowing the playing field. Even when that view is not scientific, it’s still informative. What we learn gets stored.

Negotiating a long link list of information is like driving a complicated route to a never-visited meeting spot. When we plan our route we’re more likely to reach our desired destination without wearing ourselves out.

Hope this helps.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find your strategy, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Checklist for Linking to Quality Blogs

December 3, 2005 by Liz 27 Comments

A successful blogger is always looking at other blogs to decide which blogs are worth linking to and just to get new ideas.

This second checklist: Checklist for Linking to Quality Blogs serves both of those purposes. It differs from the original Blog Review Checklist in the point of view and in the way the questions are worded. The values in this checklist are approached from a readers’ point of view. I hope you find it helpful for defining quality blogs around the Internet.

1. Audience:

2. Purpose: What is the purpose of this blog? Is the purpose stated plainly where you can see it? How well does the blog meet that purpose?

3. Content: How well does the content support the purpose? Is the content quality, relevant, readable, interesting, accurate, entertaining, and appropriate for the audience?

4. Design: How well does the look of the blog communicate the kind of blog it is? Is navigation easy and intuitive? Do items flow naturally from the first to the next? Do the color palette, image, and type choices support the content or call attention away from it?

5. Posts: Are the posts on a consistent schedule? Do they offer variety and interest within the blog’s purpose and theme?

6. Comments: Does the blog writer read and respond to comments to form a sense of community? Do you get a sense of community at this blog?

7. Technical Issues: Did the blog load fast in your browser? Was the experience more confusing or fun?

8. Writing: Is the writing clear and respectful of readers? Does the writing voice let readers know who the writer really is? Is the blog essentially free of errors in grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation?

9. Organization: Are there categories to draw you into the backlist? Is there an archive feature of “Golden Oldie”? that you would have interest in exploring? Are the Categories named things that you can understand?

10. Marketing: How would you promote this blog, if it were yours?

11. Persuading the Writer: If you are thinking of asking to link with this blog, what do you know about the blogger? What does your content bring that will add value to this blog? How might you persuade the blogger that your blog will enhance his or her readers’ experience? Find three specific links that show how your quality content ties relevantly to this blog’s content. Use this information to write a compelling argument for making a link.

Do you go through this list with every blog that you visit? Of course not. Use this list when you’re on reconnaissance, when you’re looking for quality homes for your links inside your niche or creative ideas outside your niche.

Follow this checklist with sincerity and you’ll not only get great links and ideas, your reputation will grow to be one of someone who cares about quality and long-lasting relationships.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

by Tara Hornor