I have always believed that the more links you can get on the Internet,
the better. If you look at Yahoo or Amazon, they have millions of links
to their websites. In fact, I believe that in years to come the amount
of links a website has will be a key indicator of the value of that website
and will be accounted for on its balance sheet. Why is linking so important?
A website without any links to it is at Point 0 in Internet time and space.
A link is like a road, and a website without any roads leading to it is
truly isolated. We all talk about the necessity of getting registered/linked
in the major search engines. That's important but it is only the first
step in the linking process.
Generally speaking, no link is too small to get because a link is the
best possible advertisement in that it is positive word of mouth. Think
about it for a moment. Someone who runs another website has decided that
they will encourage people who visit their website to also visit yours.
It's difficult to buy that sort of promotion.
This publication, Nua Internet Surveys, and all other Nua publications
actively encourage people to republish them on their own websites once
they link back to the Nua website. The strategy has unquestionably worked.
Nua is linked from thousands of websites and people often remark on that.
Even though many might not follow a particular link to us, the fact that
they keep seeing our name and a link to our website impresses them.
Does this mean that all linking is good? As with everything, there are
always some exceptions. When someone links to you but keeps the user in
their website by the use of frames, the power of the link is significantly
reduced. When someone creates a whole set of links to your website, linking
to elements of your content rather than your brand, that can almost be
an act of passing off your information as their own.
A case that might have reflected the above approach was settled between
Microsoft and Ticketmaster earlier this year when Microsoft agreed in
an out-of-court settlement not to link deep within the Ticketmaster website.
But the general law is vague in such a new area as linking and, even in
the United States, there are no comprehensive court opinions as of yet.
Oh, the legal ins and outs of linking will in time be sorted. I, for
one, fundamentally encourage and support the process of linking. It's
a foundation stone upon which the Internet is built. But as with much
else in life, not every link is a good one.
