I don’t think I’ll ever run out of clients who worry about linking to an outside resource from their own web site. “Won’t that mean that people leave my site?” they ask. “What if they never come back?”
They have good reason to ask. Only a few short years ago, the conventional wisdom was that you aimed for “stickiness”: making sure people never strayed outside the four walls of your web domain. Some sites took this to extremes, using Javascript to pop up windows when you tried to leave, asking “Are you sure you want to leave UnbelievablyCoolSite.com?”
Funny thing: I usually never went back to those sites. And as users’ sophistication has grown, so has our understanding of how people want to use the web… and how we can best accommodate them.
Mark at the Notes from a Teacher blog puts it perfectly:
If the original content is good enough, and the linked-to material is of quality and interest, the reward is an uptick in credibility and trust: you’ll keep coming back not just for the original material, but for the good stuff these folks have also found for you.
Linking out beats walled gardens. Period.
Succinct and well put. While hosts of business sites still debate this topic, bloggers like myself are linking furiously to any entity that might have the inclination to reciprocate. Spamblogs are just the most extreme (and unfortunate) form of this behavior. Most bloggers are just trying to make the Internet as convenient and connected for navigators and themselves as possible.