I’ve received several responses to my Day Two: Other Sites post, where I said:

“You can’t really just email bloggers and say “Hey, could you link to my site?â€? It just doesn’t work that way. You need to let your content attract links. “

I take that back and agree: my statement was decidedly shortsighted.

I think when I said that, I had too much of the “old web” perspective in mind. In the late 90s, I was a ‘Web Marketing Specialist” for a software company. My role was to find sites that would link to the company’s site. For six months, I looked around for relevant sites and basically begged the sites to link to us.

And the responses were overwhelmingly negative. While some gave me an outright “no!”, others would send me advertising information. This is one of the main differences between linking on the “old web” and linking on blogs. Companies used to view space on their pages as real estate, attaching a value to anything that took visitors off their site to someplace else. It was their feeling that they spent much time and expense to attract the visitor in the first place, and if they gave reasons for visitors to leave after so much effort, they expected something in return.

But this isn’t true with blogs. Since most blogs consist of a single author, who in many cases is writing about articles from other sites in the first place, the nature of linking has changed dramatically.

This is true especially with blawgs. Many posts are commenting on a case or ruling, and link to sites with official information on said case.

And since blawggers want other blawgs to link to them, it only makes sense that they would give links in exchange. This is no longer a case of valuable page real estate. Instead, it’s a more mutually beneficial relationship.

So forget what I said before. Go ahead and ask for links. The worst thing that could happen is being denied. But even in that case, the blawger you ask has to take notice of your site. And that could lead to a linking relationship down the line.

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