Yesterday we talked about the internet marketing myth of building hundreds of MFA sites the earn a living and how it just won’t work for a long term strategy of building viable business in the IM arena. Today let’s explore another one and that is never providing external links to other sites that don’t earn you money.

The popularity of the internet was built on links and you must link out to authority sites in order to ever do well with organic search traffic. You can get some traffic without these links, but long term you want the search engines to consider your site an expert site. This is what will position your site as one of these experts. If you have a site about blogging then you should be linking to Darren Rowse. If your niche is on health then make sure you have some links to WebMD. There are 800 pound gorillas in most niches and you should recognize that linking to high traffic and well established sites along the same topic as you then you are in fact establishing your site as an authority in your topic as you recognize the value that these other sites can offer your visitors.

Perhaps you do lose a few visitors to these other sites and you will not be able to monetize every one of your visitors. So what. One visitor is not going to make or break your business. To think long term the exposure you receive as a result of these type of links will help you more than a fifty cent Adsense click will help you. Establishing your site as an expert resource is much more valuable than one click.

If you have quality content then you have an advantage over these larger sites anyway. You can change to your visitor’s needs a lot easier than these larger 100,000 page sites can and that is one of your core competencies. The better your content the more likely your visitors are going to hang around and read more of it. Make every article or post count like it’s the life blood of your site. You only have one chance to entice a visitor to bookmark your site and become a repeat visitor. You never know which entry point that visitor is going to use to find your site, so make your content unique and count. If you need some proof that good content works, then take a look at this post by Steve Olson.

Filed under: SEO

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