How Hard to Link to Content Hinders Online Relevance

I've written previously about the role link popularity plays in search engine rankings, and about the problems newspapers cause themselves when they bury archives behind passwords and/or paid sections. Here is another example of why this is a problem. From a post on MNSpeak.com today:

Rasmussen Polls Out

Posted August 8, 2006

Amy Klobuchar leads Mark Kennedy 50%-38% in a new Rasmussen poll. The results back up the much criticized results of a month-old Star Tribune poll (the strib link is broken, of course). Meanwhile, Gov. Pawlenty's numbers are rebounding. The poll says he now leads Mike Hatch 46%-36%, with Peter Hutchinson at 6%.

Bloggers love adding some context to the political stories of the day, which often involves linking to previous stories on the topic du jour. In this case, the context of choice was a previous poll of Minnesota's US Senate race. However, Minnesota's largest newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, doesn't provide permanent links to archived content so they're now missing out on the free traffic the link from MNSpeak.com would have generated, and the link love that they had earned - but lost - by making their site less citeable.

It's the same problem faced by podcasts and vlogs today. Unlinkable content becomes less relevant due to poor accessibility.

Comments

1. Posted by: Brent D. Payne on February 26, 2008 6:52 PM:

I hear ya!! ;-)

I started on Feb. 14th, 2008 as the SEO Manager of Tribune Interactive. I am looking into this, and many other, issues.

This is going to be a lot of fun!!

Brent D. Payne
SEO Manager
Tribune Interactive
http://www.tribuneinteractive.com/network
tribune.seo@gmail.com

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