Kevin Fisher, an American User Interface designer, research fellow at ITP Lab and CTO of Skineyxt, was asked the question regarding how long should websites and companies link to files and images that are hosted on other sites, especially before they have been reviewed by the people who have access to them.

The value of this question is that it aims to promote better online management of existing content. It also has the potential to help site visitors by offering helpful information concerning the format of content that can be found within it. It’s about promoting faster, more dependable link-building and search optimization.

1. Does linking to files from sites where you or your company also own them really matter?

Connecting to web pages hosted on other websites is definitely a good idea in order to establish a better, more present link-building process. Using this link structure, however, does not always necessarily mean that the purpose is intentional and always helpful.

Instead, many sites or websites open up the content of another website (such as personal blog posts) and display the contents of the webpage on other pages. When you copy and paste links out of other websites, this type of information tends to be viewed in a background and impeded in displaying itself in a true picture, a fully-realized one.

2. Which types of links are important for SEO?

Links to a specific site through links out of other websites is an important link-based technique used by businesses to promote themselves (as a sole proprietor, for example). Linking pages to one another in a structured content format in a backlink network promotes searching traffic. However, even if links serve the specific, business-specific purpose, like spreading information via viral elements and/or supporting other content with a specific purpose, they sometimes spread themselves in ways that do not match.

In this case, there are two options to tackle the situation. First, a website may acquire the content from another website through a minimal editorial interaction. In this case, content will be first analyzed for possible connections with other sites that it may have previously linked to, and then it can be considered useful. The remaining content will be blended with other links from previous publications in order to create a more coherent, better-connected web content.

The second option is to set up a fire hose — a collection of linking websites in an optimal backlink network — that will readily provide pertinent information to the site you’re looking to promote.

3. How is the link view of content affected when we link out of websites we own?

A single website featuring a single-page article can be frustrating for web surfers.

When this content is linked to from a different website, it can be difficult to find. It can also be difficult to find links from a single website to other websites. By tying one webpage to another, the reader may still have difficulty finding all aspects of the content, and when they find all the detail, it is likely to be irritating or out of context.

One way to promote better reading of such content is to link to other websites that offer a discussion about a single page, for example. As long as those websites are written in conversational language, this kind of browsing will not appear annoying. This work is all about useful and clean reading, making it an ideal activity that can be taken more widely on the web.

The closer we can focus on these backlinks the better they will perform. Furthermore, a two-way backlink to a properly structured article will, in most cases, lead to better SEO when compared to a link to a singular webpage.

This post was originally published on Integrity Blog, a content marketing company that focuses on intelligent content marketing in specific business markets.