Links, or The Art of Talking To Spiders

No spiders for me. I occasionally click on a link if it is a new product. But not very often.

Jon,

We only put links when we quote an article, or when we are giving a resource, such as where to get the product or where to find that particular item.  Otherwise, it is like Wikipedia, it is distracting. A

Jon, sources will telling you linking a lot to reputable outside links will cause Google to index you a lot higher up than you normally would but, after a while, not only is it distracting, it tends to look like spam. Not to mention, Google takes amount spent on the page into consideration so that readers who are not up for a "Wikipedia page" when they expected a blog will quickly and eventually the page will fall down in the search results.

Indented audience is as much a factor as any amount of "Google juice."

I absolutely agree with you Jon that a blog post needs to be personal. When I write I'm talking to just one person. I also "get" that when a post is riddled with links then it is completely distracting. I do think though that there is middle ground.

It makes no difference if you are writing on AR or any other platform, you do want search engines to find your content so a certain amount of "optimization" becomes a necessary evil. It can be done with more finesse than your example though and the links should have real value for the reader. (Several links to the same page is totally redundant, not helpful for the reader or beneficial for SEO).

Jon, Chances are if I'm linking in my post it's for one of either two purposes:  to pull people over to our IDX Search page, or to send them to the official webpage for an event or organization.  Other than that, we don't link to much outside of AR.

Jon- I do have links in my posts, usually to the source of an event, for example, a previous post of mine for further information, or to a member here if I reference them.  If I am speaking of staging, I'll link once to my website.   

To each his own.  I really don't care.

I have links if there is an inspiration.  Otherwise, the needed links to our web site or blog is automatic.

The rule of thumb I learned on AR years ago from Brad Andersohn was to keep those external links relevant, and try to keep them to 3 in number.  I know when I've done a hyper-local post for a client's business, with a link to his business, he was very thankful for how the blog article ranked, and the SEO boost to his site.

Hmmm.....I think that your point is well taken, but unless I am missing something, we really haven't done too much of that here in the rain.

Like Bill said, sending traffic to one's website is one thing, and totally necessary, imho. All the other linking? Superfluous...