External linking strategies

Came across this video this morning and it offers up some interesting points in the external linking debate that is often discussed when planning a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy.

I think the 2 approaches discussed here demonstrate how the internet and subsequently, online marketing has changed over the past few years. Perceived wisdom was to keep all your ‘link juice’ for yourself and your partners and build a fairly defined yet disconnected mini-network, exchanging links but excluding anyone who could be a competitor on the SERPs. This has changed somewhat as the web has become more ‘social’.

With the advent and growth of sites such as Twitter and Facebook, linking to interesting and engaging content has become as much of an aspiration as writing original content on your own site. The works favourably in a number of ways:

• it can help position you as an expert with their ‘finger on the pulse’
• subsequently people may follow you for more insider knowledge
• linking to larger sites or more popular accounts can sometimes result in a link back
• in turn, this can put you on their radar and may develop into more interaction
• clever use of anchor text and web copywriting can actually make another’s content into a positive contribution to your own site

Personally, I’m all for sharing information, links, infographics, videos and anything else that inspires. Obviously you need to be careful about the anchor text that’s used and how prominent someone else’s content is on your own site but done correctly, it can be massively important and helpful for your own web presence.

What do you think? How do you handle external linking?