This is a short, but sweet, Web Content Thursday on a pet peeve of mine.
How do you feel about incoming links?
When someone links to me I go to their site and read the post that contains the link. I try to leave a comment on the post, even if I don’t agree with it. I figure that if they’ve taken the time and trouble to read a post of mine and write a response, then the least I could do is leave a comment.
What amazes me is how few bloggers do this.Â
I currently post on four different blogs, two of which are extremely active. On those active blogs every single post links to a news article or another blogs post. You’d think that I’d get at least one comment nearly every day, but it just isn’t so.
Now, I admit that there have been times when it looked like I was getting a link and I went to the site and couldn’t find it. (Does anyone know what causes that to happen?) But, if the blogger is responding to me, then I respond to the response.
(By the way, you can find out if someone has linked to one of your posts by going to your blog on Technorati and looking for blog reactions. If you haven’t claimed your blog on Technorati yet, I highly recommend doing so.)
What’s your take on this? Am I being too sensitive?
Contents (c) Copyright 2008, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved
7 responses so far ↓
1 Lillie Ammann // Jan 31, 2008 at
I agree, Laura. I try to respond to every link, but as you mention, sometimes I can’t find anything when I try to find the link. I’m not sure how that happens …
2 Joanna Young // Feb 1, 2008 at
Laura, I agree too. I try to do this – although I don’t always leave comments if someone has just included a whole list of posts with no commentary or apparent coherence, just random links they’ve plucked from the blogosphere.
I’ve found Technorati to be very unreliable recently. Derrick Kwa suggested I use Google Alert and I’ve set that up (I think) to search for links to the site as well as search terms.
Joanna
3 --Deb // Feb 1, 2008 at
I try to do that, too–it’s only polite! Although, as Joanna says, if it’s just a string of random links, I won’t always bother.
4 Robert Hruzek // Feb 1, 2008 at
Same here – mysterious links that don’t seem to be “real”. But on the other hand, it did get me to visit their page. I wonder how you do that? 🙂
It’s a great practice to keep up – it’ s the polite thing to do, after all! Wish I could say I’ve been 100%… but I’m tryin’!
5 Laura // Feb 1, 2008 at
Hi Lillie, Joanna, Deb, and Robert!
I just thought of one other type of incoming link that I don’t comment at. It’s when I get a link and it’s genuine, but I find that I have to log in to WordPress to leave a comment.
In those situations, I don’t typically leave a comment. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I don’t want to log in to some system to do so.
6 Jeanne Dininni // Feb 2, 2008 at
Laura,
Like you, I always try to comment and thank other bloggers for their incoming links to my site. But, sometimes Technorati seems to take an awfully long time to find some of these backlinks, if it finds them at all.
I agree with Joanna that Google Alerts are a great way to find incoming links, as well as other websites/blogs where your name or blog is mentioned. I have alerts set up with my name and “Writersnotes.net” as the search criteria (two separate alerts)–among others.
I’d also set up an alert with the name of my blog, but that wouldn’t work very well for me, since there’s an online magazine with the same name (though it uses the “dot com” extension). Were I to set up an alert for Writer’s Notes, I’d receive alerts for their links, along with my own.
I’d highly recommend, though, that anyone whose blog has a unique name–as well as any blogger whose own name is unique–use those two criteria to set up Google Alerts (or use your blog name and extension, as I have). If you do, you’ll find all sorts of interesting references and links to you all over the internet!
Jeanne
7 laura // Feb 2, 2008 at
Hi Jeanne!
I think that the Google Alerts idea is a good one. Personally, I’ve had mixed results with Google Alerts. However, if you blog name and name are unique, I can see it working well.