Did you know that people are speaking about introducing a tax to link? Does it sound strange? Maybe you do not even understand what it is about?
For a long period of time it has been made work to introduce a so called tax that will have to be paid by bloggers and everyone else for linking to content created by newspapers and similar organizations. The reason why it feels so hard to understand it is simply because it is totally stupid, unnecessary and rather destructive.
What is the “link tax” about?
Let us say that we write an article here in our IP Address Guide on a subject covered by The Guardian in the United Kingdom. As we refer to their article and create a hyperlink to that article we are subject to the link tax. Exactly how payment should be done and how the links will be discovered etc is still unclear, but that is what the point is. We should in other words have to pay for using content from another website. There are just a few problems.
- We do not use content from other websites
As we write an article on a subject covered by The Guardian, we do not link to their article because we have copied their material. If we actually copied material, we would never in the world create a link to the article we stole material from. - We link to bring authority to a subject
There are loads of websites creating junk material and writing articles on fake science. As we write an article and refer to websites we do so to show what other important people or websites say about the same subject. This is not because we are copying material, it is simply because we believe our readers should be offered the best possible content, and our IP Address Guide claiming something all by ourselves is not enough. Why not strengthen the article with links to high value sites like Wikipedia, The Guardian and so on? - We bring readers to the websites we refer to
To create a link taxi is simply a terrible idea, and the ones that will suffer might actually be the big sites who will be claiming the taxes. In the moment we will have to pay to link to The Sun, The Guardian, CNN or some other website, we will probably skip the link instead. The result will be less links pointing in the direction of the articles, which will both influence the Google authority and the amount of direct visitors that will read an actual article because it was recommended to them by us. - They should pay us instead
In the SEO business there has for a long time been focus on guest-posting and building strong incoming links. From time to time as a blogger one also gets messages from companies that would like to publish posts on your blog, and for this they are willing to pay. They write the content, they give you all the stuff you need and you even get money for it, the only requirement is one link to some website they work with. This is not exactly a business we are encouraged to do by Google, but it just shows the importance of getting incoming links from websites with an authority on the subject they are writing about. Can you consider all the harm this will do to the big company websites once those links stop coming?We are not serious about the fact that the big news-sites should pay us for those links, but that stands much closer to reality than the fact that bloggers and so should pay for linking to bigger sites.
What do you think? Would you like to fight for an Internet world where you do not have to pay to link? Visit SaveTheLink.org and sign up and support their cause right now.
What do you think about this? Do you agree with us here in the IP Address Guide? Write a comment to share your thoughts on the subject!
