- by Alena Hitzemann, Associate Web Editor

I am in the process of buying my first home. Exciting, right? Also nerve-wracking and scary and confusing and exhausting, but mostly really exciting. Talk about learning curve- the last couple months have been similar to my first months at BMC. It's a whole new vocabulary, complete with acronyms, jargon and legalese... plus, they make you do math! Truly shocking, although I do now feel a sense of pride when I casually throw around terms like "loan origination fee" and debate the relative merits of fir v. oak for hardwood floors. I am also full of real estate cliches and catch phrases passed down from our agent. The most important of which, of course, is:

Location, Location, Location.

So that is the context for my brain right now. Everything, including work, is somehow filtered through a real estate lens. Which is why, I think, I had a very interesting thought the other day when perusing some best practices for blogging. Across several articles, the most consistent and emphasized advice was:

Link, Link, Link.

A light switched on. The L word repetition. The insistence of importance. My mind conjured old SAT analogies:

location : real estate :: linking : blogging. But how exactly did these ideas connect?

And then it struck me: community.

Location is the holy grail of real estate because of community. I suppose it also encompasses the size of the lot and the pretty trees out front and the proximity to a park, but really, it's about the people and the way they interact with each other in that space. It's about friendly neighbors, a welcoming vibe and a comfortable environment- who cares if there is a park a block away if no one goes to the park, or even worse, the people in the park make you feel unsafe? "Location, Location, Location" holds true because our feelings about community don't change. We want to feel welcome, we want to feel comfortable, we want to feel like a part of our tribe.

I think linking brings the exact same thing to blogging. It demonstrates community.

Linking shows that you're a willing participant in something bigger. That you're paying attention to what people in your community are saying and that you respect them; you want to promote their ideas, engage with their opinions and encourage others to do the same on your turf. It's chatting over the fence, giving your neighbor a good recipe or even sharing some gossip (community, of course, isn't all sunshine and kittens.) A blog without links is the guy across the street who never waves when he walks to his car and doesn't pick up after his dog. Links are the social currency of the online world, the recipes, the gardening tips, even the slander. They engender the exact feelings of the perfect location: A link-friendly blog, like the home in a good location, is part of a community.

What do you think? Are links always the blogger's tools to build and grow, or can they backfire?

(And believe me, I know that there aren't any links in this post. I think it's my first one without them. Embrace the irony and wait for Friday's Round-Up.)