Yesterday, I talked about Gandalfing: blocking spammy content on your site from being indexed but today, let me ask you...

How strong are the bonds between your content?

Aragorn strengthened the bonds of Men, Elves, and Dwarves across Middle-Earth during his time with Frodo. He did it through everyday actions and even though he wasn't into it at first, eventually he hit his stride. (anyone?)

Your content also benefits from taking a small action: linking. Links are the currency of the web.

Link when it's valuable to the reader.

Aragorn always showed up when it counted. If you're referencing an API, link to the reference docs. When it's an important concept the reader may not have encountered, link to the conceptual guide. Sample app? GitHub repo. Previously covered topic deep dive? Link it. There are many times when I review an article and the author hasn't thought about what other valuable owned content to link to.

There are two main ways to link to other content: linking within your domain and across domains, also called "cross-linking."

Linking within Rivendell

You can go hog wild linking your own domain's content (yes, subdomains are fine). The Walk Score of Rivendell had to be at 100 while L-L-rond was king. That's why linking between your docs and blog doesn't really affect rank. It's safe from orcs.

The Misty Cross-Link Mountains

Where you need to watch your back is when linking across your owned domains, This means if you have kittenmittens.dev and mittenconf.io those are two separate domains so links between them are considered cross-links. When search engines detect this, it can lower your PageRank as it will seem like you're trying to boost yourself.

That's when the Rank Wraiths'll getcha.

Have a lovely day,
Kamran