HOWTO Be blogged
Have a link. Seriously: if you want bloggers to link to you, you need to have something linkable. Your upcoming TV show, protest march, product or soccer tournament is literally unbloggable unless you put it on the Web somewhere first.LinkHave a permanent link. Don't just change the front page of your site every time a new speaker for your speaker-series in announced. A blogger who links to the front page of your site today in a post about the upcoming address by Philo T Farnsworth, wants that link to stay good for in the future, and not point to the upcoming address by Paris Hilton when you change it next week. Put up a separate, permanently linkable page for everything you want to get blogged.
Have a link for everything. Don't have a single page with ten items on it. Blogging a link to the top of your fifty-screen-long page with a blurb about something halfway down generates 200 e-mails from readers who can't find the referenced item.
Use real links. Don't have links with expiring session-keys that are no good if someone revisits the URL later. If a blogger can't send the URL to a friend or put it on the Web, then that blogger can't send people to go look at your stuff. Likewise, avoid the giant, 800-character gobbledegook URLs filled with junky alphabet-soup GUIDs -- if it can't be pasted into IRC without linebreaking, there's some group of compulsive communicators who'll be unable to get to it.
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A fantastic article! Thanks!
My favorite peeve are those obnoxiously-long Amazon.com URLs.
A URL such as
http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205324234&sr=8-1
can always be shortened to something like
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0735619670/
I like it when Cory explains. It all made perfectly good sense to me.
18) Have common sense.
Funny that a link to a post about effective linking first lands me on an advert page instead of directly to the content.
This article is gold. I've been researching SEO and AdWords optimisation and other webby kind of stuff, and your article fills in a lot of blanks. It's the kind of list that's tough to write but makes you say "well, duh" when you read it - especially the point about copyright boilerplate in page footers.
I disagree with you about hotlinking images. Otherwise, all good.
One of the problem sectors in this issue are newspapers. They create permalinks to articles but they eventually disappear "into their archives" where there are no permalinks, just pay per view.
I'm not sure of the NYTimes is guilty of this now that they've opened up their archives, but the Washington Post is. I've had to go so far as to create pdfs of the "real" newspaper article so I will be able to upload and link to that.
Hotlinking of images isn't that big of a deal, but hotlinking of videos is, at least for me.
The MAKE blog once hotlinked a video of mine onto their front page. The hosting provider cut me off after it saturated all their bandwidth as everyone who hit MAKE's page started buffering the video. After that, I put all my videos on blip.tv. It's a great service that even allows users to download the video in the original format (see "Streams Stink").
Oh, God, I hate "copyright" Javascript. It doesn't work, it annoys legit fans who want to quick-quote, etc.
Agreed for the most part, ESPECIALLY on Flash sucking for linkage. Why cartoonists present work that way and expect people to help them gain readers, I really don't know.
The irony being that the article includes "Enough with the legal boilerplate", and at the bottom of the page they have links to their own legal stuff, including the seven page (in my browser) terms of service.
Term #1 being the Acceptance of Terms term, which contains the non-negotiated terms that Cory is always railing against.
Stevekiwi (and anybody else who cares to contribute) I appreciate the feedback on InformationWeek's own linkability and bloggability. Keep it coming, please.
Mitch Wagner
Executive Editor
InformationWeek
The guy who edited Cory's article.
Interesting that the link takes us to an ad, then the article, because web sites by and large are still trying to figure out the best model to attract revenue. There's radio/TV: You have to watch the commercial before you can watch the show. There's newspaper/magazine: The article and ad are side by side, so you can choose. Both are available and being used on sites, so how much does it affect readership? And does it matter to a blogger that he's directing someone to an ad prior to the actual content? There's probably research out there, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Maybe you could link to it ...
This article was really interesting to me in reference to my website http://blog.modernmechanix.com where the entirety of my content consists of scanned magazine articles.
Early on I thought about adding a url to the bottom of the image and decided that it was a bit tacky and detracted from the images. I felt that since I didn't actually create the content, it seemed kind of lame to take credit for it. Then I read this flame war between Jason Scott and the author of VintageComputing.com (which is actually a pretty damn entertaining site) and decided that I'd just leave them be.
I hadn't really considered the fact that people might actually WANT the links there. That it would be helpful because then people could find their way back to the site. Lately I have been noticing a lot of people who post images I've scanned without any links to my site. I don't mind at all, I'm just happy people are enjoying the stuff, but I see a lot of people then have to ask where the image is from.
The other thing I've been wondering about is the point about putting up a CC license on the site. I get a LOT of email from people asking if they can use the images on my site on their site or in a publication. I always tell them that I don't make any claims to the content and that they are free to use it for whatever they want, but that they might have problems with the original publisher. Particularly if they are using the images in a for profit enterprise. Of course even when people want to get the proper permissions from the original publisher it can be REALLY tricky. Many of these magazines are defunct and it's almost impossible to find the current copyright holder. This is the same problem Cory talks about happening with music and books that are out of print
What would a good policy be for a site like mine? I want people to use the content for whatever they like. If they want to link to me, that's great, but they certainly don't have to. But at the same time I feel like I don't really have the authority to actually tell them they can use it. I can't grant away other people's copyrights.
Anyway I do sort of like the little text box that Vintage Computing puts on the bottom of their images (example), it seems to say it all:
"Original Scan by VC&G for entertainment purposes. We claim no rights of this images, but if you use it, we would appreciate some credit. Thanks in advance! www.vintage computing.com"
I didn´t read the article because it was just a scam by cory to link us to advertising and make a fast buck - it sucks. At least there should have been a disclaimer after the link saying (I am making money from this link please bear the advertisement) or something to that extend. Ads destroy the web and we don´t want them especially not the intrusive ones as per the link above - you know pages that show nothing but an ad - no content what so ever. I would have thought cory has better principles then that.