Linking Out To Other Sites
When you’re a new blogger trying to make a name for yourself and increase your exposure, the best thing you can do is write compelling content that people will be interested in reading. The second best thing is to start linking to other sites in your niche. Compelling content will keep someone who finds your site, on your site. Linking to other sites will get other bloggers’ attention because everyone looks to see who sends traffic to them and who is linking to them.
I recommend linking to other similarly sized blogs. Linking to the largest and most popular blog in your niche is going to less effective because their traffic will make it difficult to see your referrals. If you send one or two people to their site and they get a thousand hits an hour, your referrals will be lost. If you send one or two people to a site that gets ten or even a hundred visits an hour, you stand a better chance of getting noticed.
Don’t send emails at first. Don’t send emails “asking permission” to link to someone, you know that an email isn’t necessary and they know an email isn’t necessary; don’t use your links as an excuse to email someone. There are plenty of reasons to contact someone, don’t use such a transparent reason. If you link a few times and start seeing traffic back from their admin panel or something similar, you know they’ve started noticing. Then you can email them and perhaps ask for a guest post or vice versa.
Linking out to sites also has a side benefit, you start associating yourself with a particular neighborhood and that never hurts.
