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:

1. Ensure that no more than 50% of the links on any page are to yourself. (Even this number may be too high.)
2. 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!!