Passed Over For a Link?

You can’t have missed the noise in the blogosphere lately about a prominent blogger feeling cheated out of a link. Boohoo, etc.

The thing is nobody deserves a link. Links are earned. And even when you do enough to earn a link, that doesn’t mean people will link you. On the one hand your great content might not have been seen at all at post time. On the other it might have been seen but not judged worthy.

How might someone think your great new post is not worthy? Well I know there are a few bloggers who refused to link to certain other bloggers unless they absolutely have to. Some don’t like name dropping A-Listers, others just don’t like particular people. Petty, but that’s life. There are also those who don’t like to link their “competition”.

It’s not just the top bloggers who get this treatment. Everyone at some point will produce something they are quite proud of only to see a blatant rip-off get all the glory or to see it overlooked. Just look at Digg how many times duplicate stories are Dugg while the original is ignored. Humanity tends to follow the same old patterns, it’s not always about what you produce but who you know.

There are two lessons here

1. Keep friendly – 99% of the time when someone doesn’t link to you it is perfectly innocent or just business, no sleight is meant on your honor so you can put away the dueling pistols. Perhaps next time you produce something really good you could mention your new post to a couple of people, make sure they can’t miss it?
2. Chill – there are more important things to worry about if you want to worry. If you put your energy into righteous indignation you will not be left with any for what is important. Besides, nobody likes a whiner, even when somewhat justified.

I saw a link today to a post that at first glance was a duplicate of an old one of mine. After thinking about it though I realized the post I thought had been copied wasn’t in fact all that original or brilliant, just mine. Being mine doesn’t make something gold standard, despite what I might think on occasion, heh. It is easy to let this stuff get you down if you don’t have perspective. When you see things from others’ point of view though it is easier to just brush it off and get on with making your own blog even better.