Is it OK to link to other sites without permission?

Hi Aunty B,

Do I need written permission from governments and commercial businesses to establish a link from my site to their site in my “useful links” page of my website?

Jennifer,
Sydney

Dear Jennifer,

You can link to anything or anyone you want, whether it is a government site, commercial business, blog or a crazy rant by a lunatic. However you have to understand the consequences of that.

Think of it as a shopping mall. Someone pops in to inquire about something and you send them to another shop down the road. Will they return – who knows? Is that the result you want?

Also the Google god doesn’t like it. Google robots which crawl all over your site and decide where to rank it on the Google ladder (and you aim is to be on page 1 of course) look at your site and see a whole lot of links to other sites.

God Google then decides you are just a big leaky bucket with a whole lot of leaky holes, and throws you on the bottom of the ladder.

The aim is to get important sites to link to you, thereby boosting your ranking on the god Google’s ladder. How do you do that? Have worthwhile content on your site, so they see a reason to link to you.

So Jennifer, feel free to link, but understand the bigger picture and read our great blogs from Chris Thomas on all things to do with search, linking and Google. This is a very important new part of business that is developing all the time, and you need to follow it closely.

Good luck!

Your Aunty B.

And how do I get them to link to me? Can I also take stories from other sites?