Linking to other websites is another one of those Not Done practices in most newsrooms. This is a silly superstition, and one that doesn't grok with how the web behaves. You're hurting yourself by not linking to other sites. Ironically, the best thing you can do is link to your competition. Also - mention them a whole lot on your blogs.

Why?

Let's look back at the old practice first. You couldn't mention the other stations in town. This led to the very, very silly practice of phrases like "another station in town reported" or "at a competing station." Nobody talks like this. We are in the facts business. But somewhere along the lines, someone thought "hey - if we mention that WXXX found out something before we did, we'll never get our viewers again." The logic should have been "The audience will appreciate our honesty with them and will trust that we will always be straight with them."

Still, as everyone engaged in this nonsense, there was no real harm done. Now, with the Web, you can shoot your site in the foot(er) by this same tactic.

Why? Search.

Search engines rate sites by, among other things, the number of inbound and outbound links. Search wants to see how many people trust you - and how active you are among other sites. You're going to turn up higher in a search if you have lots of links to your site. The best way to get those links is to link out.

Also, you can't tell every part of a story. That's where the links are also handy. When writing a tech story - link to the company's site. It's maddening to read a story about a website and see the writer hasn't bothered to link to that site. Internal linking helps too - after all, you're taking advantage of your own archives to help flesh out a story.

Remember: Google's entire business model is based upon sending you away.

You want to be the place people trust and keep returning to. The tech sites I visit are the ones I know will be excellent starting places for information. So what if I go off and wander after starting there? They've earned my trust. I'll be back.

My partner, Terry Heaton, is quoted in Mark Glaser's latest essay at MediaShift. The essay is about search engine optimization (SEO). 

“The main reason Wikipedia links always appear near the top in Google is because their Google Juice is rich with links from and to themselves,” Heaton said. “The ‘weight’ of a link is measured, in part, by the source. Wikipedia gets a ton of traffic, so a link from them is ‘worth’ far more than a link from, say, any TV station in the country. Hence, Google ‘sees’ the links and values them accordingly, which raises Wikipedia’s search results…Internal linking, therefore, always reaps SEO rewards. Moreover, the reason we link out, is to encourage linking in. Again, we want and need links. It’s job one.”

When you link out, you get links back. A perfect example came right here this week. I've only begun this blog. A typical story gets about 50 views or so. (Unless it features Tim Robbins.) Because Lost Remote linked to my story on "Forbidden or Compulsory," I've had about 350 views. You may notice that LR (where I used to write) is one of the RSS feeds on the right of my page. One link. A seven-fold increase in readership.

The Web is hypertext. Hypertext is links. Don't fight the nature of the Web. When you're reinventing, embrace it.

 

 - Steve Safran, Senior V.P., Media 2.0, AR&D