Outbound Links

Are outbound links a good thing?

Here are three articles that shed some light on the topic:

1. Is External Linking Good for SEO?
2. Optimizing Topic Pages for SEO with Marshall Simmonds
3. Linking Internally and Externally from Your Site – Dangers, Opportunities, Risk and Reward

Following is a summary for each.

One. There are two basic strategies when confronting outbound linking. Strategy one says you should try and keep your link juice. You don’t want visitors to leave your site. You don’t want to help your competition, and you are telling Google, “hey, these are better resources than my page.” This strategy errs on the side of limiting your outbound links as much as possible. The second strategy focuses on relevant outbound links. Evidence shows that there is a correlation between external links and higher rankings. Those who give links to relevant external sites usually have more links pointing to their site. This strategy potentially gives Google a better handle on what your site is by context, and shows that you are an authority. Don’t use the target keyword as the anchor text for an outbound link.

Two. This video discusses the benefit that the NY Times received when they started to put outbound links in their articles. They call it the bow tie strategy. Links come in and links go out. They say it’s good to have the mentality “we can’t be everything to everyone”, and “if we aren’t going to be the resource, we are going to be the jumping off point.” You shouldn’t be afraid to link to competitors. The points on outbound links are discussed at the beginning of the video.

Three. Don’t be manipulative in your external links. Don’t link if someone is paying you for the link, and don’t link to something that isn’t relevant to the topic of your page. Don’t link to bad places or to good places for bad reasons. That’s the main point of this article.