June 13, 2005

The art of linking.

I noticed from my Site Meter referrals that I'd gotten a link from The Washington Monthly, so, in typical blogger form, I clicked over there to see what they were saying about me. Here's Kevin Drum's post. I just want to say, it's nicely constructed, amusing in itself, but designed to send readers off to read the linked posts. That's the nicest kind of link from the linkee's viewpoint. There's another sort of link, where the relevant material is used in the post in a way that gives readers the sense of already knowing what's at the link. You appreciate this link too -- as long as it doesn't make readers think you've written something that you didn't and wouldn't -- but it's not as nice as the first type. Then there are those blogs that don't seem even to have heard about linking to other bloggers. I'm looking at you, Huffington Post bloggers.

7 comments:

Mark Daniels said...

I don't know why, but 99% of the time, Sitemeter fails to show me where my traffic is coming from. I have tried every solution to this problem mentioned by Sitemeter and have even contacted them about it. But to no avail. Nothing works. It's infuriating.

Okay, I'm through venting.

Ann Althouse said...

Mark: It means the traffic isn't coming from clicking on a link somewhere else. These are just your regular readers, using their bookmarks or typing in the URL.

Mark Daniels said...

Ann:
I would love to think that's true. But too many of them are logging onto specific articles or archive entries, indicating that they're being linked by other bloggers, by Technorati, or a search engine.

But thanks for the suggestion.

Mark

JLP said...

I LOVE Site Meter. It is an awesome tool!

About linking: it's always nice when someone actually writes kind words about your blog and then attaches a link directly to it. I have had a few of those and I appreciate them.

JLP

AllThingsFinancial

MT said...

Mark, maybe they subscribe to your RSS and visit your site by clicking on the header in their newsreader that interests them. Blogger supports RSS and I suppose it might be on without you realizing it, depending on your settings.

MT said...

Also Mark I suppose people might e-mail the URL of one of your posts they liked to friends, who access the post with a click within the e-mail.

MT said...

There's also the UFO theory.