What to not do: Overlinking (especially to the same thing)
Overlinking aka excess navigation. A problem that many bloggers run into is the lack of understanding analytics. People have a habit of thinking more links will equal more hits. Unless you go into to the data and really attempt to figure out how successful each link is and then how useful that link was to the user (how long did they spend on the click through page, how many pages did they view on that site, etc.) you won’t really understand. Stop thinking you need to spam users with things to click on. ESPECIALLY identical links. While it may bring you in a few extra hits from every 1000 impressions, you need to realize that you often do more damage than good. I look at it this way, 998 of those 1000 people saw a link that they didn’t need to see. Don’t forget that a reblog or original content will carry over a link to your tumblr anyways as long as you added some text to the post.
It has been my experience and years of analytics data backs this up, that making a link simple and useful is far more important to readers. I call this overlinking habit “The boy who cried wolf syndrome.” Too many links to the same place creates a user habit of simply avoiding links from that user. Excessive links all together on most posts can also create this. Artists especially suffer from this problem. They create art and design. They aren’t marketing people or analytics boffins. So they assume that they need to add their protfolio, website, facebook, twitter, myspace, behance, tumblr, facebook fanpage, deviant art, posterous, as well as links to related art, art you might like, source themselves directly (which kills the hi-res view), hyperlink a hi-res image to themselves (which kills the hi-res view) etc. etc. While there is a balance, too many links can kill off interest. Pick 3 or 4 things max that you think have real value to a reader. They will click on 2 if you are lucky. With 7 links they will click on 1 if you are lucky. Let people find things. Have you ever, in your life, found someone and followed them on tumblr, facebook, twitter, deviant art, posterous etc. from one post? No. Also, don’t try to be everywhere at once. Odds are, if you have 20 different social networking accounts, 16 of them are auto-posting shit or wastelands. Why would you want someone to see that at all? It makes you look lazy and can create the assumption that you might not interact with a reader/fan.
On the other side, some artists don’t add links or credit themselves at all (you should always add a title as well as your name to every post you make of your original art). On our network sites like Herochan, we try to promote artists and add the links so that they don’t have to. Even there we try to make sure the links are relevant to the user. I mean, why add a twitter link if the artist simply sets up a twitter to auto-post from Facebook or Tumblr? Why add a blogger/wordpress link (I see this ALL the time) if there hasn’t been a post since 2009? We assume a reader might be interested in mainly finding more art from that artist to browse or finding a way to purchase the art in the post. So those are usually the focal links. We also try to help on the social networking end by adding a twitter or FB fanpage link. When artists make submissions to Herochan, one of the most common things I see is link link link link etc etc. I delete most of them especially those from pages that auto-post or are simply outdated. I hate to say ‘I know better’ but in this instance, I really do.
Final note: What you should always think about is creating something of value and use to your audience. It is much better to have 100 viewers that interact with 10 pages each than it is to have 1000 that interact with nothing even though it is the same amount of hits. Remember to think about getting better not getting bigger. Rather than concentrate on how many followers you have and trying to get more via spamesc methods, think about the quality of each readers visit and how you can provide a better experience for them.
