SEO Benefit to Linking Out to Other Sites?
Once in a while, I hear talk about there being an SEO benefit to linking out to other quality/authority sites from your site. Is that right?
I think I heard it explained that SE's just assume that a spam site will not link out to anyone...so then a trustworthy site WILL link out to other sites...and so you'll get a bump up in the SERPs thanks to that.
Can anyone confirm?
Shawn
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Alan B
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Shawn,
Gideon has provided an excellent link, however while the Google post helps emphasize why outbound links help your visitors (obtain supporting / related information, build your site's credibility, it does not explain exactly what you are looking for.
Google's #1 objective is to provide the most relevant results to someone conducting a search. One of the many ways their algorithm evaluates your site is through those outbound links. They give optimization weight for every quality outbound link. The more you work to integrate links from specific pages to highly authoritative 3rd party web sites that truly match the unique content on a given page on your site, the more weight given.
So like the post Gideon refers to describes the reasons to provide outbound links for human site visitor value, that thus relates to the value Google's system gives.
Many people don't fully comprehend the process of SEO - yet this is an excellent example of the logic and reasoning for the weight Google assigns to each aspect of the optimization process. So yes - outbound links need to be implemented, and the quality of the linking matters for SEO benefit.
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Actually, linking to other sites is an excellent way for SEO management, it helps for others to find you through the site you linked to. It is another common technique for search engine listings.
Gideon R
SEO & Online Marketing Specialist
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Hi Shawn
The recent post from Google Webmaster Central blog is probably the best info on linking out...
Links:
Hi Shawn,
When linking to authority websites, a proven benefit to move up in the rankings is to use the keywords you're attempting to rank for on that page as the anchor text of the external-pointing links.
Let me know if i can clarify.
Janaki
Links:
Brendon S
Owner of www.seoassassin.co.uk/blog
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>> Can anyone confirm?
Yup, there are a couple of papers / patent apps on the topic. I'm not going to attempt to go into the theory here, but linking out to quality, relevant sites is always a good thing in terms of SE performance. The rule of thunb is if it's likely to help your users (in this case by offering them other quality sources of information) it's good for you
