Marco.org

Matthew Panzarino:

There is only one reason why you wouldn’t link right in the body of your text, as far as I’m concerned: you don’t want people to click on it.

Placing the links at the bottom of the post drives next to no traffic.

There are two issues here: burying a source link at the end of a long post in a half-assed “Source” or “Via” does indeed send almost no traffic.

But the bigger problem is the practice of news sites rewriting articles from source sites while adding little to no original value. In those cases, where they put the source link doesn’t matter, because as I wrote a few months ago, they replace the need to view the source article.

The most ethically and professionally sound practice when you have little value to add to the source story is the linked-list approach. Give a teaser quote and a prominent link. Make it clear that you didn’t write the target article, there’s more to be read there, and here’s how to get to it.

Don’t replace it. Send your readers there.

If you’re truly providing value, you should have the confidence to send your audience away, knowing that they’ll come back to you. If that’s not the case, don’t bother publishing.