Advice about reciprocal links and other outbound linking


	Outbound Links - Why Your Website Needs Them By Mark Sceats Developing outbound links to other relevant websites is an important part of a linking campaign. A link building campaign should not just be limited to only securing inbound links from other websites. Linking is a 2-way street. If you want other sites to link to yours you should show a willingness to link to other sites. Unsure about linking? Many people are. Here are answers to some common questions about linking... Why add links to my site? Won't links mean I lose visitors from my own website? Should I exchange reciprocal links? Where should I add links? Q. "Why add links to my site?" A. Good links can add value to your website. By pointing your visitors at useful information you help them & so make your site more valuable in the process. Also if you link to quality sites you benefit by association. But not all linking is good! Indiscriminate linking can and will harm your cause. If you have links to irrelevant or low quality sites you undermine the quality of your own site. Remember - when you add a link to another site you are effectively recommending it. If you link to (i.e. recommend) irrelevant or low quality sites then you erode your credibility in the eyes of both your valuable visitors and also search engines. So always link judiciously. A good acid test on any linking is to ask the question - will this link be of benefit to my website users? Note: by users we're talking people - any search engine benefits linking may provide through increased link popularity (Google PageRank) should be viewed as a bonus. Far too many people are fixated about linking purely for the sake of boosting their link popularity which is why the web is full of so many crappy pseudo directories no one takes any notice of. Fortunately search engines are increasingly dismissing these links in their ranking criteria. Q."Won't links mean I lose visitors from my own website?" A. No, linking doesn't mean losing visitors from your site if you have the link open as a new window. Use <a target="_blank" href... to achieve this. (To see an example, check out the link code we ask other sites to use when they link to us). Q."Should I exchange reciprocal links?" A. Many sites will only link to you if you link to them ("you link to me and I’ll link to you"). Our advice is to generally avoid them. The exception is if the site wanting a reciprocal link is clearly relevant and linking to it adds value to your site users. Maybe a good question to ask yourself is "would I link to this site even if they don't link to mine?" Remember - always link judiciously. If you do consider a reciprocal link back carefully check the site first. Many sites that exchange reciprocal links do so indiscriminately and have links pages that are full of irrelevant links. Having them link to you will be of negligible or zero benefit. Check to see that the links pages can be found by search engines (use the Google & Yahoo cache functions) – if it can't be then a link here won't benefit your link popularity. Check the links page Google PageRank using the Google toolbar. If it is zero then a link from this page will be of negligible or zero benefit. A page with No PageRank MAY mean the site has been penalised by Google for spamming (see the final point below). Also check to see the other site is playing fair and not using JavaScript links, re-directs or other dirty tricks to preserve PageRank instead of linking directly to your site. Finally check the other site isn't involved in link spamming or other practices search engines object to. If they are & you link to them you may well tarnish your site with the same brush. Q."Where should I add links?" A. From your site users' perspective the best place for links is in context. By this we mean if you have a page about a particular topic & want to link to other pages about this topic then the best place is to include them on that page. Burying them elsewhere on a "links page" is far less helpful to your visitors. Also having outbound links from a page to authoritative external pages about the same topic can boost your own page's search engine rankings. Do not include external links on your homepage. This is the most important page on your site and the one most visitors see first. You want it reassure them they've landed on a relevant site & encourage them to go deeper into the site. Having links here to external sites does not help this goal! Also your homepage generally has the highest Google PageRank and you want to ensure this gets passed on to important internal pages rather than leaked out to other sites. (For the same reason you should always have far more internal links on a page than external links). If you are exchanging reciprocal links with other sites they'll more than likely link to you from a "links" page. If that's the case, then you probably should do the same - rather than link from a content page. If you link to other sites for a range of different topics then you should create separate links pages for each topic to keep them on theme. This will make your links pages more appealing to other sites & so encourage them to link to you rather than if you have a pseudo-directory page full of irrelevant links. Because there are so many rubbishy links pages many SEO experts including ourselves recommend not naming your links page "Links". Instead call it something else like "Resources" Summary Don't be afraid to add external links to your site. If you do it properly and only link to good relevant authoritative sites you'll do yourself more good than harm. But do it wrong an you may seriously undermine your search engine rankings. Next topic: Pay per Click This page last updated May 03, 2010 Why search engine marketing \| key search engines & directories search engine optimisation \| the right keywords \| search engine compatibility search engine marketing - do it yourself
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	Outbound Links

Outbound Links - Why Your Website Needs Them