Over at outbrain we have released the fruits of a partnership with Six Apart by making the outbrain recommendation widget available from within TypePad. The great aspect of this integration is TypePad bloggers now have an instant way to add a smart "link out" strategy to their blog. The main benefit here is for TypePad bloggers to 1.) show their readers great links to either their own blog or other great TypePad blogs, 2.) increase traffic by having their links eligible to be shown on other TypePad blogs as recommended reading. Clicks on your links appearing on other TypePad blogs will boost your page views and hopefully most of the new readers that come to your blog from other TypePad blogs will convert to be subscribers either through rss or email subscriptions. So more traffic and new readers are great benefits to adding outbrain to your TypePad blog but that's not all. It's about how your readers actually want external links and what that means for you as a publisher.
The process of "Linking Out" is taking the publishing industry quietly by storm. "Linking Out" is not anything new as sites like the Drudge Report have been linking out and prospering for years. But now every large publisher is shaping a formal "link out" strategy, (I know because I spend my days interacting with publishers for outbrain). But what's intriguing to me is that the same mechanics apply to long tail bloggers as they do with large media sites - and that's the principle of maximizing the precious time readers spend with your content. Readers will leave your site - so the opportunity is to give them relevant pathways off our site but also a way to get back. outbrain does just that by serving links to relevant content but upon clicking opens a new window. So readers can link off your site, consume what they are interested in, but then close the new window and return to your site. Done correctly, this can lead to an increase in time spent on your site as well the good will from readers that you are serving the best links, even if they point out.
Small bloggers aren't to worried about tracking the financial metric of CPW or Cost Per Word but larger publishers do. And in this case, smart "linking out" is an extremely economic way to enhance your reader experience without incurring the cost of creating and serving the content from scratch. Just look at the success of the Drudge Report and the recent move by many large publishers to start publishing links and abbreviated content from outside sources like blogs and other publishers for deciding if "linking out" is right for your blog. The answer is that's if right for every blog, no matter the size.
All this sounds great and it is, but the next metric in evaluating a smart link out strategy is real estate requirements. How much real estate do I give to external links? The answer is as little as possible to achieve your goals and that's where outbrain shines above all other recommendation widgets or technologies. Since outbrain is designed to serve recommendations on a personal basis, outbrain does not require large real estate to splash as many links as will fit in a side rail box hoping to catch the interest of the reader. All other recommendation technologies like Sphere, Inform, Aggregate Knowledge etc. will take as much space as you will let them, in an attempt to guess at what your readers might like. With outbrain, the best recommendations are selected on a personal basis and served withing a few lines under each post. No large side rails full of links, no hogging of space, just a few good, clean relevant links. And if outbrain doesn't have anything good to show, the space is not used.
So if want to adopt an instant smart "link out" strategy for your blog you can install outbrain here or from within TypePad and then enjoy the satisfaction that you are using the same technology that some of the largest publishers in the world are also using to "link out" & prosper.
