The mainstream media has come under fire many times in the past for failing to link out to sources from their stories. However the problem isn’t with the entire industry and it’s wrong to make generalisations when a good number of online news websites are very good at crediting sources with the appropriate link.
Some websites have adopted a half hearted approach of linking to lots of websites, but only from blog posts – the main articles in the site only contain internal links.
We believe that linking to useful websites doesn’t “leak” traffic – quite the opposite in fact. Offering useful links actually makes visitors more likely to return to see what other interesting websites they might find in the future, a model that sites such as Digg and Fark are built around.
Of course as a blogger it’s sometimes hard to appreciate the fact that mainstream media websites are, with the exception of the BBC, business entities with shareholders and an obligation to maximise profits. It’s understandable that they are reluctant to send valuable page views elsewhere. We spent some time researching the issue to see if there was a correlation between the frequency a site links out and the number of links it gets in return.
The results below might just surprise you.
|
Links out |
|
Links |
| Newspaper |
Main stories |
Blog posts |
Domain Strength |
Incoming |
Outgoing |
 |
 |
|
99% |
29,629,082 |
1,730,000 |
 |
 |
|
99% |
18,415,777 |
970,000 |
 |
|
|
88% |
25,667,372 |
1,940,000 |
 |
|
|
97% |
15,114,877 |
1,600,000 |
 |
|
|
87% |
14,421,388 |
722,000 |
 |
|
|
98% |
11,986,781 |
729,000 |
 |
|
|
99% |
11,867,676 |
1,080,000 |
 |
|
|
97% |
9,968,336 |
1,360,000 |
 |
|
|
92% |
7,862,887 |
254,000 |
 |
|
|
97% |
7,038,634 |
474,000 |
 |
|
|
92% |
5,980,262 |
275,000 |
 |
|
|
83% |
5,434,310 |
357,000 |
 |
|
|
88% |
4,121,583 |
144,000 |
 |
|
|
93% |
3,995,969 |
330,000 |
 |
|
|
97% |
3,709,030 |
1,460,000 |
 |
|
|
96% |
3,667,889 |
169,000 |
 |
|
|
83% |
3,233,951 |
12,600 |
 |
|
|
92% |
3,087,518 |
226,000 |
 |
|
|
90% |
2,452,153 |
211,000 |
 |
|
|
88% |
1,001,791 |
16,800 |
 |
|
|
78% |
552,930 |
196,000 |
 |
|
|
74% |
408,462 |
60,700 |
 |
|
|
60% |
183,570 |
14,500 |
 |
|
|
60% |
164,586 |
3,960 |
 |
|
|
58% |
94,804 |
878 |
 |
|
|
48% |
31,356 |
337 |
By entering all the incoming and outgoing link values from the table above into an Excel spreadsheet we used the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient to determine whether there was in fact a correlation between the number of times a website links out and the number of links it gets back in return.
The resulting figure of 0.842733801 shows that in general there is a strong relationship between news websites linking out and getting links in return.
Comments from the media
In order to make sure this article was as balanced as possible we contacted a number of mainstream newspapers to ask what their linking policy was. The responses are below.
It appears that a number of newspapers have a policy of linking out, but in practice this doesn’t always happen for many reasons.
Tom Happold, Network editor Guardian Unlimited
“It has always been our policy to point our readers to whatever we think is of interest on the web.”
James Montgomery – Editor, FT.com
“What I can say, regarding attribution by the FT to non-FT sources, is that one needs a clear distinction between “attribution” and “sourcing”, journalistically speaking. Citing a non-FT source would not, generally speaking, meet the FT’s required standards of verification. (Just because something is reported by the New York Times, say, doesn’t make it true, however much we implicitly believe what we read in that newspaper – we have to check for ourselves.)
Obviously, we are more inclined to believe some sources (Reuters) than others (chat rooms). Many blogs might be regarded as inherently unreliable because they don’t reveal their sources or uphold traditional journalistic/MSM standards of reporting (eg, double sourcing, on the record or whatever). But there is nothing intrinsically untrustworthy about blogs as a genre.
So when it comes to linking out on FT.com, a link does not constitute sourcing for us. But as a general rule, if we do acknowledge some third party content, then best practice would be to carry a link to it.
For example, if we write: “Yesterday’s statement by the prime minister appeared to represent a climbdown from an interview to the BBC last week in which he pledged….”, then we would link “interview” to the BBC article. That’s a service to the reader, who may want to follow the link to learn more; and a confirmation that we have accurately reported the earlier quote.
Do we also live up to this best practice? No, because of some technology issues to do with persistent hyperlinks in text in our CMS, and newsroom training. But we are improving.
Last, and this is probably what you really want to know, when do we acknowledge third-party content? This is tricky – lots of facts/information/articles written in the FT, or any other publication for that matter, existed earlier somewhere else. But so what? That doesn’t mean we have to credit every snippet of information to another publisher. We do “hat tip” our competition, in print or online, for a genuine clean scoop; and best practice would therefore require a link.”
Drew Broomhall – Search Editor, Times Online
“Times Online has a policy of linking out to third party sites where editorially appropriate, such as products, organisations, reports etc mentioned in articles. Some sections do more than others, it depends on the section’s editor. Our outbound link count might even have been higher before the relaunch, a lot of links were lost due to html being stripped out of inline links when they migrated to a new CMS.”
Credits: Mark Woodbury, Trifecta Tool Set, Yahoo Site Explorer and Live Search.
Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.
July 16th, 2008
I have just started to put in place a directory of UK web designers and yesterday I got my 1st request for a listing:
“Hi there,
Please can you put my design company into your Directory for Yorkshire. We are a newly established business but have a successful record so far! Our website is being built at the moment (funny how you can design everyone else’s website and never find time for your own!).
Our address:
Unit 4 Amber Business Centre, Rawmarsh road, Rotherham, S60 1RU.
Kind Regards,
Candice Link
Managing Director
JEWEL Cre@tive Ltd”
Her last name is link, how awesome is that for link requests? I was so impressed with her last name, I told her she could have a listing immediately, even though I have not properly launched the dir yet.
Candice’s website, Jewel Creative will be online soon.
Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.
June 10th, 2008
A month or so ago, one of the sites that I am working on got mentioned in this big fashion magazine. The magazine had wrote an entire article about the client.
I am not going to say which magazine it was, but if they had linked to the client, it would have been an awesome link. There was however no link to the client. The really annoying part is: they had actually placed the client URL in the article, but without linking it through.
I conferred with the client and we came up with a plan to get the hyperlink: this involved us doing our best to get the person who wrote the article on the telephone.
After a couple of days, we did and she said that she may be able to help us out.
To our surprise she sent us the following offering:
And there was a 3 month minimum contract, that is £2,499 (about $5k) to hyperlink a URL that is already on a page for 3 months.
Needless to say, we did not take them up on their offer – We just thought that asking nicely would be enough.
Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.
June 4th, 2008
Image Credit: london canary wharf by night
Getting listed in business directories along with Google and Yahoo! Local is a great way to let the search engines know exactly where you are and what you do. I submit my clients to business directories all of the time and this site is listed tons of them, so I know which ones offer value, here are the top 5 UK ones:
1/ When I 1st launched this site and I didn’t have any rankings the UK Small Business Directory was a god send, the owner TJ was kind enough to put my site on some special pages and for a long time it was my no.1 source of traffic and enquiries. The directory is well organised and really well optimised, if you search for a directory in just about any county on Google you will see the directory on the 1st page. You can get a listing in the directory for free, simply click on the register details page and follow instructions.
2/Biz-Dir Business Directory was launched in 2006, I listed this site in it soon after and since then I have had about 50 or so visitors from my biz page which is not bad considering a listing only costs $35. The directory covers most of the popular online business related categories so there is probably going to be somewhere relevant for you to submit your site to. Simply navigate to the correct category and hit the submit button to get started.
3/ The Internet Business Directory doesn’t send as much traffic as the 1st two but it is still a great directory, the categories are organised by topic, country and county and every website gets a good 3 or 4 listings, for instance this site is listed in internet services UK, England and Lancashire. Submitting to the directory is easy, click on the relevant category, navigate to your county and then click the submit button, providing your site meets the guidelines you get a lifetime listing for just £14.95.
4/ Now 2 Business is the oldest of the 5 and has been around ever since 2001, it has everything I look for in a directory, age, strict guidelines and good rankings. If I have a client who sells office supplies and I can get them listed on a page that ranks high for office supplies directory, then of course I am going to do it. There are a number of inclusion options. free, reciprocal and express listings are available, click on the free submission page to get started.
5/ B2B Index has a good category structure and ranks great in the search engines for some really competitive phrases such as business to business and business directory, it’s not even that far off for some of the category names such as web design. You have to link back from one of your web pages to get a listing, navigate to the right category and click the add site button to get started.
All of these directories are hosted in the UK, have search engine friendly category structures and provide direct links that can help you with your search engine optimisation efforts.
Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.
November 22nd, 2007
I was reading Aaron Wall’s blog the other day and I found the following post:
Do Article Submissions Work for SEO?
I get the feeling that Aaron is not a big fan of using article submission for SEO and neither am I, here are 5 good reasons why article submission is a poor link building tactic and why you should publish your best articles on your own site as opposed to article sites:
1/ If you submit the article to an article site and market the article on social media sites, the links will be going to the article site and not your own.
2/ If you submit the article to an article site and it attracts links from other websites, blogs etc. they will be going to the article site and not your own.
3/ If you submit the article to an article site then the search engine traffic will go to the article site, the readers may or may not click the link to your own site.
4/ If your article is great surely you want the readers of your website to be able to read it, if you submit the article to an article site they won’t.
5/ Most article sites are not trusted by the search engines so the links back to your own site will hold little if any weight.
Publishing informative articles on your own website and marketing them on social media and press release sites etc. is a great SEO tactic and the rewards can be plentiful.
Publishing the article on your own site and article sites is a complete waste of time as article sites generally generate very little traffic and only one copy of the article will be counted by the search engines.
26/07/09 Update: This article has been so popular that I have decided to update it for you all and add some extra information about how to do article submission properly and where to submit to. I still stand by all 5 of my reasons.
How to do article submission properly
1/ Don’t post anything really decent that stands a chance of getting links to an article directory, publish the good stuff on your own site in a blog or articles category and publish all of your OK articles on article directories.
2/ Don’t publish any of your articles in more then 1 place. This one rule will help you on so many different levels with SEO. If someone re-publishes your article then that’s fine, but don’t go out of your way to get an article published twice, only one copy will rank in the search engines and pass weight to your site.
3/ Make sure the article directory you are submitting to provides dofollow links and add a keyword text link or two to your author signature, my ones usually come out looking something like this:
“David Eaves knows a lot about search engine optimisation, more of his articles can be found at his SEO news blog.”
Generally speaking you should not add links to your pages in the main content area – Ezine Articles and quite a few others nofollow these links so they won’t pass weight there, plus your article will probably come off as being less professional because you will have plugged yourself. The only time this is OK is if you are linking to something that genuinely ads value to your article, like what you can see by viewing the article below:
How To Get Traffic And Links To Your Blog
4/ Don’t go mad with it, if you are trying to SEO a regular site like this one, then 1 per month is more then enough. If you have a huge holiday website or something with lots of categories to rank, then maybe do one a week, any more time then that spent on it will be wasted.
5/ Use the very best article directories that you can get published at and never submit more then two articles to each one, once you have a couple of links from an article directory don’t use it again, find new ones because the links will count more. Here are links to my top 4 general article directories to get you started:
You can find out more information about the sites listed above by reading our new post about top article directories.
You should also search for article directories in your niche, there are some amazing ones for SEO such as WebProNews, Sitepoint and Webcredible.
Happy hunting!
Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.
July 1st, 2007
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