Thoughts about hyperlinks from a Steem perspective

If the goal of a Steem curator is to rank the posts in an order that attracts the most eyeballs to the blockchain, what is a curator to think of hyperlinks in articles?

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The Internet would lose the vast majority of its value if all links among content were removed. It is the relationship among web pages that allows Google to identify the best apple pie recipe among the 16 million results. Without the links the only information Google would have is word frequency.
-Steem Whitepaper, emphasis added

Introduction

Fifteen or twenty years ago, I read an academic article that studied the relationship between outbound links and inbound links for bloggers. Unfortunately, I've spent a few hours searching for it in recent weeks and I've been unable to locate it. As I recall, however, the authors found that bloggers who include more links to other blogs also wind up having more incoming links.

As a sometimes-author, this is something that I think about frequently when I'm writing articles. Creating a quality link in markdown is very time consuming, and it would be much easier to just skip it, and maybe just dump a list of links in a "Reference" section at the bottom of the article with no customized title and no context.

However, I want to create content that will attract eyeballs from other sites, so I force myself to do the exercise. You can see an example of how I try to include relevant links in my recent article, The Mysterious Death of Ellen Greenberg - A 12-Year-Old Homicide or Suicide?. I probably spent just as much time finding links for that article as I did writing it.

I tend to put a bit of thought and effort like that into many of the links that I include in my articles. Of course, I can only guess at whether the effort is paying off, but this isn't something that has been discussed very often here, so I thought I'd launch a conversation to see what other people think of the importance (or lack thereof) of including hyperlinks in our articles.

As a curator, however, this is something that I have basically ignored. I do a cursory check for sources, and otherwise ignore the absence or presence of links in the article. I'm starting to think that it might make sense to rethink this practice and pay more attention to the link quality in people's articles.

In this article, I'll think out loud about the importance of links to the author and the curator on the Steem blockchain. I'm going stream-of-consciousness, so I'm not sure what the sections will be, but hopefully it won't be too much of a disorganized mess. ;-)

Links extend the network size

Earlier this year, the Association for Computing Machinery announced that the 2022 Turing Award was being awarded to Robert Metcalfe. Metcalfe is famous, especially in the cryptocurrency space, for his formulation of Metcalfe's Law

The value of networks grows exponentially with the number of people using that specific network and that every time a new user joins a network, the number of connections increases proportionally to the square of the number of users.

In short, a network's value increases in proportion to the number of users².

One measure of the Steem network size is the number of wallets, another is the number of investors, and a third measure is the number of people who are reading our articles. If we want to increase the reach of the Steem network according to this third dimension, I think that links are the best way to do it.

As the Whitepaper points out, search engines can't do much with our blog articles if there are sparse links to and between them.

From an author's perspective, I want to include links to increase my own audience size. From a curator's perspective, I want to see links in articles in order to grow the network. As a curator, if I see two articles of equal creative "quality", but differing link strategies, I should value the one that I think has the more effective link strategy.

Internal links

For the purpose of this article, I'll say that an "internal link" is a link to another article or comment on the Steem blockchain. As an author, my own practice is to also "mention" an author when I create an internal link to their article.

I don't know, but I would hope that the search engines can use these internal links to organize and rank the blockchain's content more effectively.

The interesting thing that I've noticed over the years is that even people who disagree about a topic can still develop into a symbiotic blogging relationship by linking to each others' articles. Before censorship and "deboosting" became widespread, bloggers on opposite sides of thorny issues used to rise in prominence together. After the big-tech companies began putting their thumbs on the scale and exercising more editorial control, this seems to have declined, but I think it's still relevant for Steem.

In my opinion, creating relevant internal links between related Steem blog articles is probably one of the best tools that's available to the author who wants to build an audience - provided that he/she finds one or more co-bloggers who will participate in the link exchange. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats.

From the curator perspective, the use of internal links in an article tells me that the author is seeking to build a network that reaches beyond the narrow confines of their own wallet and blog.

External links

This brings us back to Metcalfe's Law. Aside from producing content that people will read, if I want to grow the size of the Steem social network, I suspect that the external link is my best tool.

I saw many articles in the searches I ran earlier where people argued that sites should avoid linking out to other sites because it could direct traffic away from the site. I disagree. In my opinion, every relevant external link has the potential to harness Metcalfe's Law for the benefit of people on both ends of the connection.

I probably spend way way way too much time and effort thinking about this, but - as an author - you wouldn't believe how much time I spend on searches to find someone to link to when I link out on a topic. Generally, I try avoid linking to sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc... Those are my sites of "last resort". Basically no one is ever going to notice a link from my little blog on one of those sites.

Instead, I look for people using blogging platforms like Medium, Blogger, Wordpress, Substack, etc.. Right or wrong, the idea is that the author might see a link in their log file and be curious to see who was writing about them. The trick here, however, is the existence of "nofollow"/"dofollow" links.

In condenser, a post's payout has to reach $10 in order for a link to earn "dofollow" status. And as an author I have no control over that. A link with "dofollow" status generates much more attention from the search engines.

As a curator, if I see an author who is making good use of external links (pixabay doesn't count ;-), I should do what I can to help them get to "dofollow" status. It's also important to note that beneficiary rewards get deducted from the post's value at payout time, so if someone has set 25% beneficiary rewards, the post actually has to reach something like $11.43 in value in order to retain dofollow status after payout.

Link Spam

Of course, any tool can be abused, and hyperlinks are no exception. Bottom line, a link should be relevant. The same search engines that will provide increased visibility if we use strong linking strategies will also reduce our visibility if we're flooding them with irrelevant links.

The role of the author here is simply to make sure that links go to relevant and informative sites.

The curator should avoid voting on posts that contain link spam because if these posts earn "dofollow" status, the Steem social network will be penalized.

Conclusion

Links have a direct value on the Web and can be seen as a pseudo-monetary unit. A Google search on “currency of the web” shows that this is not a novel idea, though it is little theorised.
-Jill Walker Rettberg, Links and Power: The Political Economy of Linking on the Web

In the end, the inclusion and proper use of hyperlinks is part of a broader field known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and I know almost nothing about this field. The thoughts laid out here are just the result of my own brainstorming.

So, this is the start of a conversation, not the end. I think it would benefit authors, curators, and investors alike if we all pay attention to the best and worst uses of links.

What are your thoughts about best practices for authors and curators where hyperlinks are concerned?

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Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".

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Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.

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^{Pixabay license, source}

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