If you’ve been reading blogs for a long time you’re probably used to seeing plenty of links within blog posts.
The best bloggers in the world link to their own posts and pages and they link to other posts and pages.
It’s not only something you need to do for proper attribution, but it’s something you should to do benefit your blog.
How does it benefit your blog?
I’m glad you asked.
Linking Gives Credit
First, when you use another source for information and insight it’s important to link to that source. Provide attribution so your readers can go to the original source and see the complete background of the information you’re using.
When you’re writing your articles it’s common to use inspiration from another source and to build on it with your own thoughts. This is very common in blogging and the link to the source of inspiration is important.
You give the source some love, but you also add credibility to your blog.
Benefit: Credibility
Linking Puts You On The Radar
If you read blogs you’ll notice that it’s common for bloggers to link to other bloggers. They do this to their friends, but often that link is the first step in building a relationship.
When you link to another site or blog that person or business will know about it. They’ll see the alert if they’re using something like Google Alerts or Fresh Alerts by Moz. They’ll see the traffic coming to their site from your site.
I have a personal site called Country Music Life. I provide my thoughts on new country songs. The artists and their teams will see the links to their sites and the mentions of their names and songs and will share the reviews with their followers.
But it happens with GBW too. We’ll write about businesses and those businesses will mention our posts on social media sending traffic our way.
Benefit: On the radar and more traffic
New Relationships
When you link to other sites, blogs posts, etc. you’re opening up the potential for new relationships. These can be mutually beneficial and when you’re looking to grow a blog it can really help you grow the blog with traffic and attention that leads to sales and profit.
Let’s say you’re a home builder. You want to write a checklist for homeowners that are looking to remodel. You create the checklist and list the people that the homeowner should call and the businesses they should look into for supplies and wares.
When you list these businesses, link to them and once the guide is published reach out to them via email. Share the guide with them. Show them that you’ve linked to them and have given them credit. Ask them if they would share it with their audience.
These are relationships that can last a long time and can lead to all sorts of benefits for your business.
Benefit: New relationships
Conclusion
The answer to the question in the title is Yes.
Include links in your blog posts. You’re not sending traffic away from your site. Your readers will see those links as you giving credit where it’s due. They’ll appreciate that you’re giving them access to more information.
They’ll read your entire post and they’ll want to come back for more.
And those links can lead to some great business benefits.
So always link out when you can with your blog posts.
Image: buddawiggi