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Links: The currency of the web

One of the beautiful things about the web is that it gives a voice to almost anyone, regardless of location, financing or background. Nearly anyone with access to a computer and a connection can put a message out for the world to see.

However, with so many voices in one forum, there becomes a need to organise. Some, clearly, will be heard more than others. The web had to develop a means to ensure that quality sites are easily recognisable.

As the web grew it evolved a kind of informal currency, a way to reward and promote sites that had quality content. Best of all, the solution that evolved was a democratic one, allowing everyone to participate.

That solution was the hyperlink.

Although it was originally designed solely to allow pages to be easily connected with one another, as technology has progressed and links have become easily trackable, links became a form of currency, something to be earned and exchanged.

Understanding how linking works on the web is crucial to succeeding on it, especially if one is looking to start up a blog or start linking regularly to other sites.

To do that, one has to stop looking at links as just a means to get from one page to the next. To look at what they symbolise, especially to search engines and users.

Links as search engine power

The most prominent way linking benefits a site, other than simply directing visitors to it, is a higher search engine ranking.

Google, as well as other search engines, assume that sites link primarily to other sites that they enjoy or find useful. With that in mind, it examines how many pages link to a specific URL. It adjust the site’s ranking based in part on that.

Google calls this the site’s PageRank. It is measured on a scale of 0-10. Most new sites have a PR of 0-3. Established or growing sites typically have a 4-7 while only the largest sites sites have an 8 or above.

PageRank affects not only how well a site ranks in Google, but also how much weight is given to the sites to which it links. For example, if a site with a PR of 6 links to a page, it carries more significance than a link from a site with a PR of 2.

While PageRank is not a large factor is determining your Google ranking, it is one of the easiest to track. Several sites offer you a means to check your site’s ranking. Some controversial sites even offer you the chance to buy links in hopes of boosting PageRank.

The importance of PageRank has also given rise to a new HTML standard, known as “nofollow,” which allows a site to link to another page without transferring any PageRank. The nofollow tag tells the search engines not to follow the link. Then, the link, while still available to humans, does not carry any weight with Google.

The end result is that giving someone a link is no longer a matter of sending them a handful of visitors. It is giving approval to the site and thus boosting it in the search engines. With PageRank, a link can help a site even if no one ever clicks it.

This has resulted in an entire economy of links, one In which there are many “poor” sites, a decent number of “middle class” ones and a few “wealthy” domains.

Learning how to survive in this economy is critical.

Links as authority

Blog search engines, such as Technorati, faced a similar problem to Google when trying to locate quality blogs. Technorati, also like Google, turned to links as a tool to solve the problem - but in a slightly different manner.

In Technorati, links represent authority. Each unique blog that links to your site, or any page on it, increases its authority by one. Unlike what happens with PageRank, sites with more authority do not carry more weight.

A site’s authority is predicated upon the number of blogs that have linked to it in the past six months. Links older than six months are not counted. All blogs in Technorati are ranked according to their authority. The top blogs are determined by how much authority they have accrued.

Where Google’s system favours the quality of links, Technorati’s favours quantity. This can make link building a difficult task as a site needs to do at least fairly well in both to succeed with avid news readers.

Link-building tips

If you want to accrue a good number of incoming links, the most important thing to do is consistently create high-quality content and make it available for the public to see. Although creating quality work is not a guarantee of success, no amount of strategy can get people to link to bad content.

If you produce the type of material to which people want to link, it is inevitable that they will.

However, to help the process along, there are a few things any site can do:

1. 1. Interact with other sites: Either participate in discussion on other sites or encourage your reporters to do so. People are more likely to link to sites that they know.


2. 2. Avoid link exchanges: Although a seemingly natural way to earn links, Google recently clamped down on sites that were exchanging and/or buying links.

3.  Link within your posts: Sometimes to get links, you have to give them. Link to your sources and other related content rather than just mentioning them. Also, be sure to send trackbacks to the related posts to the other sites know that you are linking to them.

3. 4. License your content: If you allow your content to be licensed for use on other sites, those sites will very likely link back to the source, especially if you make it a requirement of your license. 
4. 5. Make it easy: Provide users with HTML code and/or banners or buttons to use on their site. Though text links are preferred, offering them an easy way to link to your site in the way they want makes it more likely they will.

In regards to what kinds of sites to target, it is important to remember that, even to Google, all sites carry some weight. Since targeting which sites link to you is difficult without either buying or trading links, it is best to let the links grow naturally and realise that your incoming links will likely be a mixture of sites from all levels of the web.

In the end, encourage a mixture you should encourage because nothing gained by turning away any legitimate, reputable site that wants to link to you.

Conclusions

Links are no longer simply a means of getting around on the web. They are now both a currency and a vote. By linking to a site, you not only direct human visitors, but notify the search engines that you approve of something they have done or or an article that they have written. This boosts that site’s ranking and authority.

However, this does not mean that you should be stingy with links or give fewer out. Rather, it means that you should participate in the economy, both as a buyer and as a seller. Only by participating can you hope to gain the maximum benefit from this search economy and from the democracy that has risen from it.

Getting more involved in the search economy can only help media companies as they work to grow their presence on the web. While the competition may be fierce, it does not preclude cooperation.

If anything, the search economy demands we work together, more than any other economy has before.

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