What is Speedlinking?

Oct 21, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Blogging 8 Comments

ProBlogger Darren Rowse is credited for “inventing” Speedlinking. When you Speedlink, you round-up a collection of links to other blogs’ posts that you think would be interesting/useful to your readers. Here are a couple of examples:

After looking at the above examples, you should have a good idea of what Speedlinking is all about.

Why should you Speedlink? It can benefit you, your blog, and other blogs as well. You save time, your blog gets traffic and comments, and other blogs get incoming links. Everybody wins, right? Here are some of the said advantages:

  1. Speedlinker posts are quick and easy to write. You just throw an unordered list into the Write Post box, paste-in the links, and write a little about them. Now you have more time to spend writing “Pillar Content.” :D
  2. You can point your readers towards some of the interesting/cool/useful things you found online. Not everyone’s going to spend an hour sifting through your Del.icio.us account, so how about making things easier for them. And here, have another smiley: :D
  3. If someone has linked to you in the past, you can be nice and link-back to one of their better posts.
  4. People like Speedlinker posts. This month, 6/10 of the most popular posts on Webmaster-Source were BlogBuzz editions. How many posts did I write in October? See for yourself. Speedlinkers tend to get decent comment counts, plenty of traffic, and bloggers that you link to often drop by to see what you said about their post. If they notice your blog, they may subscribe, and they could even link to you in the future!

Interested? In case you decide to start Speedlinking like the rest of us nice, link-giving bloggers, here is the Official Speedlinking Manual:

  1. Pick a name for your Speedlinking posts. Will it be “Speedlinking,” like Darren Rowse and so many who have followed, or will you come up with a unique name? While you’re at it, come up with a guideline of how often you will publish an edition. BlogBuzz is published whenever my collection of links gets big enough, which is basically once or twice a week. Darren Rowse puts out Speedlinking editions erratically, going weeks or even months without releasing a new one. It’s your call, and dependant on how much time you spend online.
  2. Start collecting links. Create a folder in your bookmarks manager, or just use a plain-old text file. Whenever you see something interesting online, save the URL to your Speedlinking collection. Once you have enough links (I’d say at least 5), publish a new Speedlinker post. Be sure to put the date (or something else) in the title so you don’t have 100 posts titled “Speedlinking.”

Give Speedlinking a try, and remember: Everyone likes a big list of links.