My friend and colleague Dave Taylor, who writes several popular weblogs on technology and business, today posted an intriguing article to his free Blogsmart News e-mail newsletter: "Linking as a Way to Drive Links."

You have to subscribe to that e-mail list in order to see this article (it's in the archives), but here's the gist of it.

On Sept. 6, Dave posted a blog entry about Hewlett Packard: Dunn follows in Fiorina's footsteps as HP implodes yet again. This business story includes links to related postings by three other bloggers: Valleywag, Paul Kedrosky, and Robert Scoble. He found these related postings with a simple Techmeme search — but for non-tech topics, more general feed aggregation services like Technorati would work just as well.

The Payoff: Dave wrote, "While I was sleeping, top blogger Robert Scoble was reading through my article and then updating his own blog entry to include a link back to mine: 'UPDATE 2: Dave Taylor, who worked at HP with both Hewlett and Packard, [gives us the historical context] behind why this can be traced back to Carly Fiorina¹s time running HP.'"

Links from A-list bloggers inevitably bring lots of traffic to a site or blog. They also help build constructive relationships with more established individuals, communities, or organizations. Plus, linking directly to related posts or sites positions your contribution to the public conversation as a resource, not a mere pontification. That means that content probably will attract more links and more traffic over time, since it serves as a gateway to an array of information, or to the historical record.

Dave also notes: "The ''trackback' system is supposed to let bloggers know when others cite their works, but many blog authors — myself included — ignore trackbacks. If you're really eager for a link back from an authority, it might be worth sending a two line email message notifying them of your article and inviting them to read it at their convenience."

He's right about trackbacks. — on all my blogs, I've gotten so overwhelmed with trackback spam ("spings") that I've just turned off trackbacks. I hate it when a good conversational tool gets co-opted and trashed by spammers, but that's inevitable.

He's also right about e-mailing bloggers to let them know you've linked to them. As a matter of fact, I'm going to do that right now…. Yo, Dave…

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