SEO is Important — But Not at the Expense of Your Visitors
Tim O’Reilly wonders (out-loud) whether linking to yourself is the future of the web — I hope not. He ends the post with two guidelines worth thinking through:
- Ensure that no more than 50% of the links on any page are to yourself. (Even this number may be too high.)
- Ensure that the pages you create at those destinations are truly more valuable to your readers than any other external link you might provide.
Most techies reading this blog understand the traffic potential of good search engine optimization, but I’d urge everyone not to place SEO ahead of the the user experience. You should certainly be thinking about the search engines as you write, but in the end, your audience is the user — not Google. Yes, you certainly might increase your SEO traffic by continually linking to yourself, but is it really worth alienating your current audience? I agree with Joe — brand traffic is more valuable in the long run. Building brand traffic is not easy and will be even more difficult if your complete focus is building a good experience for Google. Regardless of how good your site’s content is, I’d be very skeptical that your website is the most relevant source of information about everything you mention on your website/blog.
As I said above, I certainly hope linking to yourself is not the future of the internet. I firmly believe that users gravitate towards sites that put their best interests first (I know I do), so those who are excessively linking to themselves are shooting themselves in the foot in my mind. Remember, linking out is good.
Ok, seriously — happy linking!!
Jeremy Rivera
Posted at 13:07h, 19 AugustI think that this may seriously be impacted by the type of website that you are utilizing.
If 50% is a minimum number of links you should have pointing to yourself then the Zillow homepage is in serious trouble, as it doesn’t link out at all. 😛
I would say that blogging sites that don’t link out are in serious trouble, because they are missing out on valuable resource materials, but that static websites should weigh carefully any outbound links on your homepage. Internal pages I would tend to agree with more, that once you’re deeper into yoru site, offer more of your content as well as additional content to supplement the information you can provide.
Jay Thompson
Posted at 15:56h, 19 AugustGreat post Drew. I’ve often said, “write for your readers, not the serch engines”. That doesn’t mean search engines should be ignored, but Google employs some pretty smart people, and it’s remarkably good at figuring out what your site is about.
My favorite line from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:
“Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?””
Drew Meyers
Posted at 10:40h, 20 AugustJeremy-
I think you’re right that it depends on the type of site that you are running. Zillow is a media company that makes money via advertising, so our goal with the home page is to help people discover interesting content on zillow. I agree with your point about internal pages. And on that topic, I should note zillow drives over a million clicks per month to our listing partners from Zillow home detail pages.
Jay-
I 100% agree with you — everyone should put that quote right above their computer as they blog.
Internet Marketing for Real Estate » Week in Review Overload
Posted at 12:34h, 22 August[…] The future of SEO may require being your own middleman, according to O’Reilly. Hat tip to Drew Meyers. […]
San Diego Homes
Posted at 09:39h, 23 AugustDrew, Drew, Drew.
While Trulia says they are fine with no following their widgets, Zillow changed their TOS and is going to the trouble of notifying people that they cant no follow Zillow’s stuff, now you tell us not to place SEO ahead of the user experience, but that is exactly what you are doing.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 11:12h, 24 AugustWhether or not a link is “followed” has zero impact on the user experience. It’s simply a notation to the search engine crawlers as to whether or not to pass SEO juice to that link.
This is a pretty simple issue — Zillow follows links to our partners who provide us content, and we expect the same in return from those who use zillow content on their own sites.
Maximizing Your Active Rain Blog for SEO | GeekEstate Blog
Posted at 16:32h, 27 August[…] If you maintain a blog on Active Rain, you’ll probably find this post by Justin Smith from the Real Estate Tomato valuable (and yes, I still don’t think you should put SEO ahead of your readers). […]
Justin Smith | Denver SEO Expert
Posted at 22:08h, 27 AugustThat’s good stuff Drew. Thanks for sharing. It’s a hard balance, because you want to always be driving traffic back to related articles, but you’re totally right… if you’re just linking internally all the time, it’s going to be terrible for usability. I would just caution to not link out just for the heck of it. You need to really think in terms of what is going to be the most valuable for your visitor.
Also, you do have to be careful not to link to excessively to competition with anchor text that will rank them higher than you.
So, I suppose if you could keep those rules in mind, you’ll create a great user experience and still be able to rank.
It’s weird to me how much of a chimera SEO has become in the real estate industry.
Eugene Oregon Homes
Posted at 22:59h, 31 August[quote=Justin]Also, you do have to be careful not to link to excessively to competition with anchor text that will rank them higher than you.[/quote]
Justin, I try not to link out to competition at all. 😉 I agree that it is a good idea to link to sources of value to my visitors and there is plenty of that without linking to direct competition.
New sport
Posted at 12:29h, 02 FebruaryHello I am very impressed with this blog, thanks for sharing.
I will stop by soon …
New sport
Posted at 12:30h, 02 FebruaryHello I am very impressed with this blog, thanks for sharing.
I will stop by soon …