You can really get more blog traffic by giving links rather than being stingy and hoarding links. It pays to reach out to others and their sites.

I know that this sounds counter-intuitive to most people which is why they are afraid and don’t want to lose traffic to other blogs and websites.

They’d never consider giving a do follow link to anybody, putting links to other relevant sites in the so called blogroll in the sidebar or installing a Comment Luv or Keyword Luv plugins.

I’m here to tell you that if you are afraid of losing traffic to anybody you should consider first if you have any traffic to lose in the first place.

Get More Blog Traffic Linking Out, Not By Being Stingy

If you enhance the experience of your visitors by showing links to other sites they are likely to come back. And even if you do lose a portion of the visitors to your blog by them using the links you provided, do you think that they were going to come back to your blog if it weren’t for them clicking on those links?

By engaging with other blogs and the whole internet community you will gain traffic and visitors to your blog.

Engaging also includes commenting which I have covered in another post: Get Blog Traffic Increase With Blog Comments.

Linking out and giving links through various plugins mentioned above will go a long way in attracting traffic to your blog. I’ll relate a story supporting this further down so keep on reading.

Scared of Google Taking Your Rank Away?

One of my blogging friends Josh Rimer whom I met in September of last year has now decided to do just what I’m talking about. On his own accord without me ever mentioning it since our first conversation in September.

He has been told and believed like many bloggers that having do follow links on his blog would cause him to lose Google ranking.

There is a wide spread belief that Google supports link hoarding by calculating which links are going in and going out and if your blog links out it will lose.

Since Google wants to enhance the experience of people who use it to search the internet such belief is very irrational. It would be working against what Google wants.

There are enough bloggers with high Google rank like Kristi’s Kikolani that are not link hoarders for you to realize that you can do the same without being paranoid.

A True Story of One Blog That Got Scared of Sharing

I emailed this story to Josh in response to his decision to go do follow etc.

Let me tell you of one guy’s blog that I used to visit and comment on. It used to have a do follow and showed people’s comments in the side bar and even had top commentators. That blog used to have twice as much traffic as mine and ranked higher too. It also had plenty of blogroll links.

Then the guy became paranoid, probably being influenced by some non sharing freak.

He removed everything from the side bar: everything having to do with sharing, went no follow and guess what happened to him: Google stopped liking his blog.

His rank is now 0 and his traffic is 2 to 3 times less than mine. You’d think that he would restore things back to what they were before but no, he’s persisting in hoarding things for himself and keeps on losing more and more.

I stopped visiting his blog (except every 3 or 4 months just to see if he came to his senses) and so apparently did a lot of other people. He used to get more comments than me, now he usually gets none or 1 or two per post once in a while. If he gets 4 comments he probably has a celebration now.

I hope that you’ll at least consider linking out besides of course commenting and giving do follow links. If you’re still scared of doing this at least link out in person by attending live events, even small ones like the one shown below.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, the video and the nice banner.

Tell me and all the readers your view on giving links and getting traffic to your blog.

Leave your comments and do tweet and stumble and digg this post for others to see and share their views.

Authored by Vance Sova

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Filed under: Get Blog Traffic, Increase Blog Traffic