There are many components to establishing yourself as an expert in your niche and it’s not surprising that you sometimes feel like giving up. However, I’m a great believer that quality will show through in the end, so concentrate on what you are best at and push ahead all the harder when things don’t seem to be going your way.

You can help yourself in this process by regarding everything that you post online, or in your newsletter, as a nugget of value and a component of your reputation. If you value everything of yours that you have ever committed to the Web as an essential component of who you are and what you do, you should find a way to link to each piece in a relevant way.

Search engines are starting to recognize the importance of such reputations now. Relevant links to interesting content are rewarded. And you should help with this process with your own linking policy. You should regard internal pages on your website or blog as just as important as your home page and you should link to external content that you have posted elsewhere too. If you link naturally to each component of value – wherever it resides and whether it is text, image or video – you will be demonstrating its value and relevance within a particular page context.

The Web is not just a web of home pages. It is much more subtle and complex than this. I would advise you to link to wherever your value is with relevant anchor text. (Anchor text, in case you don’t know, is the colored text that can be clicked on.) And you should follow this method both in the internal linking within your site or blog and with links into your site from other web properties. Link relevantly to what you are proud of wherever this seems appropriate and natural. If you link only to your home page, you are distorting and belittling yourself. You are only valuing one small part of who you are and what you have to offer your customers.

Always value every aspect of yourself.

Please comment on this post below. And if you value what is said, as I do, link to it! Links are at the heart of the Web project.