Lots Of Little Links Or A Couple Of Big Ones?
In his entry Designer Sex Sells better than Generic Sex, David Krug makes a case against the type of traffic that Damn I’m Cute is receiving and sees more value in sites like JOAB, Successful Blog and Sexerati. Each of these sites has a higher ranking in Technorati and therefore many more links pointing back to them, yet their traffic is only a percentage of the traffic that DIC receives.
Now it isn’t fair to compare all four of these sites together because their content causes the differences in traffic and linking. JOAB and Successful Blog are more community sites where readers will come back daily to participate in a conversation. You will find that these type of sites do very well in getting links, but usually those are only from other little sites. Over time traffic will grow, but there is never a quick burst of traffic like the type you see on DIC or Sexerati.
So this begs the question do you want to go for the little links or the big links? Little links are easier to attain, but the immediate rewards are minimal, while the big links show an immediate return but not much for long term growth. Obviously the best answer is to go for both and following that will help you greatly in how you plan your content.
I have always believed that sites with constant updates should do a good job of mixing up their content between high-quality articles to quick hit entries. On Whitespace I simply couldn’t do 2-3 entries a day unless I dropped the word count and potentially the quality. Keeping up with the pace of the entries would not only tire me out, but also tire out my readers. However, posting every couple of days and sometimes daily allows for the discussion to develop and more time for links to get passed around the web.
On DIC, once an entry is gone from the frontpage it has almost 0% chance of getting linked and I find that is the case with all my sites that do a couple of updates a day. Everybody loves to get Slashdotted, but why do people seem so surprised when their traffic returns to normal the next week? Links from smaller sites carry a lot of weight in helping you get subscribed readers so don’t shun them because you are trying to hit a homerun every single time.
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POSTED IN: Web Tips
3 opinions for Lots Of Little Links Or A Couple Of Big Ones?
Paul Watson
Dec 14, 2005 at 7:04 pm
Curious; what is the conversion rate for DIC vs. Successful Blog and Sexerati.
Scrivs
Dec 15, 2005 at 1:27 am
What do you mean by conversion rate Paul? People who return or subscribe or what?
aaron wall
Dec 16, 2005 at 4:11 am
If you get the big links the small ones follow. The big ones put you on the map.
For example, a few years ago I was Aaron Wall = nobody
then Danny Sullivan mentioned my stuff and suddenly some other people found it easier to link to my sites
but sometimes the people at the top do not find you unless some in the middle do…I think the effect is synergistic
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