In case you missed the news, I have been asked to give a talk called “door links” at the New York City chapter of Art History in the summer of 2013. As an example, I’ll give you a link to my talk, a couple of which I had on my site with a link to the slides. The talk is in two parts. The first part covers the basics of the subject; the second part describes the art of the door links.
The subject of door links is a bit of a controversial one. While I think it is important to get the basics right, I don’t think it is important to get it wrong.
I think there are two primary issues with door links. The first is that we are talking about links that are “real” links. A “real” link is one that has a target on it. For example, the link under each image is for a link on the site that has a target on it. The only difference is that the link is usually “real” and not “fake”.
So if the target page is real, I would think we should link to it. But if the target page is fake, I would think we should link to a link that has a fake target. A real link on a fake page is not worth the time.
The second is that we have to make sure the link you have on your site is real. For example, the link under each image is for a link on the site that has a target on it. So the target is real. The link is often real. So we do not want to link to it.
The second rule is that if the link is fake, then link to a link that has a fake target.
If no link has a target, it is not worth linking to. That is the second rule for fake links. We should do our best to find links on sites that have real targets.
The third rule is that fake links that are not real should not be treated as valuable. In this way, the second rule for fake links is not violated, and the third rule is not violated either. In this way, fake links that are not real should be treated as worthless. The third rule for fake links is not violated because fake links that are genuine are valuable.
We don’t want to see that kind of links, but it is the first rule we should have in our own content. If we did that, we wouldn’t be adding new posts to our blog every time we post here, and our readers would not be able to see them.
Sure, adding links to posts can be a risky endeavor, but adding links to new posts is not a risk. That’s because new posts should only contain links to existing posts (and a link to the original post if that’s relevant). We don’t want a flood of links to posts that are not new, but for people to get to them and read them. We have to put some time and effort into making the posts we post to be both high traffic and high authority.
