Outbound link strategy

linking

Applying outgoing links in a site’s copy and navigation structure seems to be one of the areas that create the most Webmaster paranoia and greed, but if you follow these common sense guidelines, you can be generous and still safely contend in the search engine-ranking race.

Where does this link apprehension come from?  Primarily, webmasters fear that having too many outgoing links will damage their page rank, as if sharing links meant giving away of the search results pie.  If we examine this fear, we see that it’s not entirely rational.

Search engines will flag sites with a massive amount of links and especially irrelevant ones.  However, so will readers.   If you stick to producing quality copy with the reader in mind, the search engine will like it as well.

This means that linking out to material that is relevant and beneficial to readers, it will be beneficial to your search ranking as well.  Keep in mind that the Internet is a World Wide Web of linked material – not just Google.  Links make this World go ‘round, and webmasters that are so afraid of losing their PageRank that they only link to their own sites or internal pages neglects the purpose of linking in the first place.

Many webmasters also express concern that linking to a competitor will send customers elsewhere.  While you might send a customer away, if you are a reliable source of information, you’ll be flagged as an important source, and others will link to you.

Unfortunately, in order to get one-way links, which are the holy grail of link building, someone has to be giving away those links.  If we all hoped to get links, but never gave them, then there would be no such thing as one-way links at all.

But don’t get too carried away.  Most fears are based in some truth, and the fear of the outgoing link is no different.  Linking too much both overwhelms the reader and makes your site seem more like a bogus link farm to the search engines, meaning you could get flagged and then your PageRank will suffer.  Stick to quality copy and only the outbound links that will assist your reader, and everybody wins.

If a site on a given topic has 50 outbound links to relevant sites and another site that is very similar only has 3 links out of it, the first is more likely to be a comprehensive source, right?  If a site is a more significant resource of information about a given topic to a reader, a search engine will see it this way too.

In SEO copywriting, if you do the writing and linking well, your readers will appreciate it, and so will Google.  In other words, be a copywriter first, and the SEO will take care of itself as you earn trust.

For more on a link building strategy, stay tuned.

By: Ilene Rosenblum