My original Link Love Idea was well regarded by a few people but I soon realized that it wasn't what I wanted to do. Without unique text for each link, a list of links (even in the middle of sentences) still looks like a link farm. Not only that, but linking to particular posts without relevance is nothing more than comment spam, regardless of my intentions. My "blog drive-bys" have relevance while the link love (as it was) doesn't. After some serious thought, I decided that I don't really need the pingbacks from the blogs I link to as a result of the link love since the drive-bys provide me plenty. Sure, it makes better marketing sense to get the pingbacks as reciprocal links, but who said I had any sense?

The way I really want to do it is much more flexible and doesn't put any restraints on what I can say. I want to add one or more outbound links to selective posts but I don't want to bind myself to doing it all the time. Besides, it's a lot more fun to get reactions from people who don't expect it and find out about it through Technorati, vanity searches or other means. This is the way I want to do it:

Link Love:

Andy Beard's blog, Niche Marketing - Andy Beard, covers a wide variety of topics within his niche including blog search engine performance, WordPress optimization, affiliate marketing tips, and social media. There's a lot of good information there for anyone who wants to get the most out of their blogging endeavors.

Chris Lodge maintains three different blogs at the same time right now. His photo blog is called Autofocused.co.uk (I think he should drop the "co.uk" from the title) and he showcases places and things throughout Scotland in it. His fun and games blog is called Thermal and it really is a lot of fun to read. His serious blog, his blog about blogging and making money, is called Blog-Op. I read all three (well, I just look at one of them) and I think you should too.

Baxter at The Far Corner doesn't post as often as I would like but when he does, he writes about things I'm interested in. As a fan of the old Commodore computers, he's already got plus marks as far as I'm concerned.

Lyndon at Esplanade has his own brand of humor and funny stuff on his blog. I don't visit it as often as I should, but I always get a chuckle or two when I do.