Robert Scoble is at fisticuffs again. This time he’s taking on the entire blogosphere.

His initial kick in the groin came with a post on the previous day. Evidently, Scoble thinks it’s a big deal if he doesn’t get linked to.

The day before that, even, is the post (in three parts) to which Scoble thinks everyone should have posted to.

Well, as history would have it, Engadget, a popular gadget blog posted on the same topic the next day and didn’t show any link love to Scoble. The New York Times also posted a news story on the topic to which many people on Scoble’s s**t list did link to. Is Scoble a little jealous?

We don’t have a beef with Scoble. Never met him. He’s considered a pioneer blogger and gets his paycheck from Bill Gates. Not that we care. But it seems a bit ridiculous to be upset about not getting link love. The No. 1 rule online is if you’re not getting the hits then it’s because of your content. After all, content is king.

Which brings us to our point. Maybe everyone linked to the NYT and not Scoble because the blogosphere collectively agreed that the NYTs content was more valuable than Scoble’s. Note this testimony posted by WebProNews:

But the fact is that the New York Times story, which Scoble craps on everybody for linking to instead of him, does a better job of explaining why it’s important than Scoble’s videos do.

That testimonial was written by technology blogger Matthew Ingram.

Engadget’s managing editor, Ryan Block, adds to the dialogue:

When we link to a site, that’s a tacit affirmation of quality as deemed by Engadget’s editorial standards.

WebProNews goes on to tell us what the lessons of the day are:

1. Link to bloggers and they’ll love you for it.

2. Find the earliest source, link to it.

3. It’s okay to ignore the chain: Blogger 1 writes a sentence, links to Blogger 2 who also wrote a sentence and linked to Blogger 3, who maybe has two sentences about the topic and links to Blogger 4, who began the discussion. Skip Bloggers 1-3, link to Blogger 4.

4. Links are an editorial decision, i.e., a silent but poignant way to validate one source, and by default, invalidate another by not linking.

5. Sometimes content is overlooked. Sometimes it is ignored (I’m talking to you New York Times!). But it’s difficult to tell which has happened and why.

6. A good old fashion blog-fight can get you a lot of attention.

7. But depending on your position and situation, it’s not always a good idea to start one.

Yeah, whatever. This is what we’ve got to take issue with. Not once does WebProNews say that bloggers should choose who they will link to based on quality. Not once. What’s up with that? Doesn’t WebProNews believe in quality? Here’s Scotland SEOs list of lessons to learn from this brouhaha:

1) Link to bloggers only if you are attributing them as a source, or if you just want to for some reason.

2) The earliest link is a bunch of bunk. Find the best link for your purposes. There are really two valid reasons – besides attribution – for linking to a website: Quality and trackback value.

a) If a post is a quality post and provides value for the discussion you are making then by all means link to the post. After all, you want your readers to judge you on the basis of your quality and editorial decisions.
b) Trackback value is based on PageRank. If you see two blog posts of equal quality and one of them has a higher PageRank than you do and the other has a lower one, link to the one with the higher PageRank and use the blog’s trackback feature to link back to your site where you are posting on them. That’s a valid strategy and benefits you while you benefit your readers and the person or blog you are responding to.

3) Point well taken, but this should not be a hard and fast rule. There may be instances where you’ll link to Blogger No. 1 or Blogger No. 2 or 3 and leave Blogger No. 4 alone. If you’re a news agency then it might hurt your credibility to ignore the original poster, but if you are a business within an industry and you providing value to your customers then you have to think about how your customers will perceive your message and your links.

4) OK, now WebProNews is contradicting itself. If it’s an editorial decision (and we believe it is) then Lesson No. 3 doesn’t make any sense. Why present a hard-and-fast rule and then say “It’s an editorial decision.” Our rule is: It’s an editorial decision ALWAYS.

5) It’s not that difficult guys. Sometimes a source is ignored or overlooked, but more often than not a source is not used because of the value of the content. Make your content valuable and you’ll be linked to.

6) Yeah, so what. If you’re looking for attention there are other ways of doing it. You don’t have to start a fight. But if that’s the way you get attention, fights can be fun. Go for it.

7) In other words, Scoble stepped over the line. Perhaps. The bigger question is, did he have a good point? Nope, we think not.

Our bottom line:

1) If you use something from another website, give attribution with a link.
2) If two posts are about the same thing, link to the higher quality one or the one that can provide you a valuable trackback link.
3) Hey, man, it’s your blog; it’s your decision.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 7:00 am and is filed under MAIN. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.