All controversy does is muddy the waters. And that’s exactly what the controversy over
whether or not you should have outbound links on your site is good for — making life difficult.
The subject of outbound links has often been debated. There are some who worry about leaking
PageRank — what (supposedly) happens when you link out to other sites. The fear behind leaking
is two-fold: when you lead people away from your site they may not come back (hence your visitors
“leak” away), and when you link out to other pages, you’re reducing the value of each “vote”
because the value of an outbound link is divided by the total number of outbound links.
No one knows for sure exactly what mix of elements is considered when your page is ranked by a
search engine. However, it’s safe to say that if you have only inbound links and no outbound links,
it can’t look good for your site. And especially these days when social marketing is becoming more
and more of a factor for search engine results. The best plan of action is to have a balanced mix of
inbound and outbound links. Your site visitors will expect to see some links leading to other sites
on the Web, whether those links are simple resources to help them find what they need or something
else.
Outbound links also help to establish your expertise in a particular area. Yes, inbound links help
with that as well, but it’s not enough just to have people pointing to you. You should also have some
favorites out there that you find helpful and that you think others will find helpful. When your visitors
click through these links and find that you do know what they’re looking for, the loyalty points
will be awarded to you.
Keep your links relevant. That doesn’t mean that you can only link to pages that are in
the same industry as your own, but if you do link outside your industry, make sure there
is some logical reason for sending your visitors in that direction.
Don’t overuse links. There’s nothing more frustrating for site users than to find that every
other word in an article is linked. A good rule of thumb is no more than two or three links
per article or blog post on your site. Other links, like ads for other services, can be added
in addition to these text links, but again, keep them to a minimum.
Use keyword anchor text as often as possible when creating your links. Using the
phrase “click here” won’t gain you any leverage with a search engine crawler. Using a link
that reads “gourmet ingredients,” when that phrase is one of your key phrases, will help
improve your search engine ranking as long as the link leads to a page that truly is about
gourmet ingredients.
Be careful whom you link to. You may have heard the phrase “Don’t link to bad neighborhoods.”
What it means is that you don’t want to link to low-quality sites, because some
search engines will penalize you for that. For example, if you link to a spam site or a link
farm, search engines are not going to look favorably on that link. If, however, you link to
high-ranking sites, you’ll gain even more traction with search engines. Remember, though
you may not be penalized for sites that link to you, the outbound links on your site are
under your control.
whether or not you should have outbound links on your site is good for — making life difficult.
The subject of outbound links has often been debated. There are some who worry about leaking
PageRank — what (supposedly) happens when you link out to other sites. The fear behind leaking
is two-fold: when you lead people away from your site they may not come back (hence your visitors
“leak” away), and when you link out to other pages, you’re reducing the value of each “vote”
because the value of an outbound link is divided by the total number of outbound links.
No one knows for sure exactly what mix of elements is considered when your page is ranked by a
search engine. However, it’s safe to say that if you have only inbound links and no outbound links,
it can’t look good for your site. And especially these days when social marketing is becoming more
and more of a factor for search engine results. The best plan of action is to have a balanced mix of
inbound and outbound links. Your site visitors will expect to see some links leading to other sites
on the Web, whether those links are simple resources to help them find what they need or something
else.
Outbound links also help to establish your expertise in a particular area. Yes, inbound links help
with that as well, but it’s not enough just to have people pointing to you. You should also have some
favorites out there that you find helpful and that you think others will find helpful. When your visitors
click through these links and find that you do know what they’re looking for, the loyalty points
will be awarded to you.
Keep your links relevant. That doesn’t mean that you can only link to pages that are in
the same industry as your own, but if you do link outside your industry, make sure there
is some logical reason for sending your visitors in that direction.
Don’t overuse links. There’s nothing more frustrating for site users than to find that every
other word in an article is linked. A good rule of thumb is no more than two or three links
per article or blog post on your site. Other links, like ads for other services, can be added
in addition to these text links, but again, keep them to a minimum.
Use keyword anchor text as often as possible when creating your links. Using the
phrase “click here” won’t gain you any leverage with a search engine crawler. Using a link
that reads “gourmet ingredients,” when that phrase is one of your key phrases, will help
improve your search engine ranking as long as the link leads to a page that truly is about
gourmet ingredients.
Be careful whom you link to. You may have heard the phrase “Don’t link to bad neighborhoods.”
What it means is that you don’t want to link to low-quality sites, because some
search engines will penalize you for that. For example, if you link to a spam site or a link
farm, search engines are not going to look favorably on that link. If, however, you link to
high-ranking sites, you’ll gain even more traction with search engines. Remember, though
you may not be penalized for sites that link to you, the outbound links on your site are
under your control.