PureBlogging

The following guest post was written by Chris Garrett from chrisg.com.

Think back to your school days. Were you one of the people who got invited to all the parties, or were you part of the group who envied them?

When I was at school I wasn’t one of the popular kids. I got picked last for sports and had to try way harder than my friends to get female attention. I spent a lot of time chewing over how unfair this was.

I was reminded of this recently when a blog accused me of being one of many blogs who links in a cliquey way. Just like my lack of school social success, there are bloggers out there who feel the blogosphere is unfair and are being left behind in the link-love game.

It is true that the so-called A-List get more linkage than other blogs, but I don’t believe there is any conspiracy there. Just as at school the popular get more popular, when it comes to blogs you are just more likely to link to a blog you have heard of and trust. When linking to a website are more people likely to link to Wikipedia and Amazon?

Also, just like my sports experience, people give more attention to those who merit it. I suck at all sports, it’s a simple fact, of course I got picked last. That’s not unfair, just a fact of life. So in blogging, if your content sucks don’t expect to get linked to.

So if linking to the A-List is considered bad what should you do?

Link to quality. A-list does not necessarily mean good quality and not being in the A-list (whatever that is) does not make one low quality

Occasionally I will link out to get noticed, to make contacts or to reward readers, but you have to still make sure you are creating useful content or otherwise do those kinds of posts rarely if they provide little reader-value.

Forget about the “lists”.

Consider your own readers, prioritise creating value for your audience. Find content that will benefit the reader in some way, be it to explain a point or show a particularly good example. Rather than looking at popularity, judge blogs based on

• Do they add anything to the discussion?
• Do they recycle old content or create something original?
• Is it clear and well written?
• Does the person give ideas and solutions or do they turn out content just to get attention or adsense clicks?
• Was the content created as bait or do they have a sincere purpose.

Your readers are your priority, they are who you write for, don’t let them down by linking to sub-par content!

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Today’s guest post is from Chris Garrett, who writes about blogging and Internet marketing at chrisg.com. You will also find him patrolling the forums at AuthorityBlogger.com.