Outbound Links

[Costa Boy]

I've been reading a lot on trying to get ranked well on Google - which seems to me to be one of the most important things to learn when building websites.

What I don't understand is this - if I am trying to provide useful information - surely it makes sense to link to other websites - but in doing so, am I not degrading my site by having lots of outgoing links as compared to much fewer inbound ones.

So for example if I review a hotel - the best thing for me is to list it's telephone number but NOT a direct link to it's website?

This seems crazy - surely my objective should be to provide as much useful information as possible to the user of my site.

Confused and in a muddle.

Mark

[Ellio]

Forget the search engines and build the site to do the best possible job for the browser.

Outgoing links are not bad and the latest algo's are looking for natural looking sites that are not over optimised.

Perhaps that why some of the bigger less optimised sites are fairing so well these days.

We recently removed some multipage links we had tried and are old positions have been restored.

Forget high link numbers for the sake of it and go for "Themed" and "Quality" links

Forget orphan/doorway pages and duplicate content even if there is good reason.

Create the site you would like to see as a user and make sure it is clean well structured and uses some of the keywords your interested in in a natural way.

Use synonyms as well as actual keywords and ensure you content is original and fresh.

Nothing new here buts its worth re-stating.

Good luck and remember if you follow the above and rank well you will have nothing to worry about when the next update looms...

[DMC_34]

Other than avoiding duplicate content the most important factor Google is still all links. Keep them relevant and link to more than just your home page. Spread links out over across many keywords.

DMC

[rlrouse]

Outbound links that enhance your content by recommending relevant, useful resources for your visitors are always good, regardless of their effect on your search engine rankings.

That being said, I link out liberally on most of my sites and they do extremely well update after update.

Intelligent linking is yet another area where doing what's best for your visitors will serve you well in the end.

[bhartzer]

Outgoing links to appropriate websites only enhances your site's content--the search engines know that and actually reward you for linking out to the appropriate websites, not the other way around.

[Costa Boy]

Thanks everyone who has replied to my question.

I'm much less confused now - before I had got the impression that providing links to other sites in my informational pages was bad because I would then have lots of links out - but much less coming in.

It didn't make sense that trying to provide a good site for people would mean I was penalised by the search engines!

From the replies, I'm understanding to go ahead and provide links where appropiate as it will provide the best result for the user and will ultimately be recognised as this by the search engines.

If I have this understanding wrong please tell me!

Mark

[JuniorOnline]

I also thought that if you link to other sites, make use of the keywords you use on those links. The spiders will see that your linking strategy is relevant!

[dburdon]

An outbound link with appropriate anchor text certainly has some impact in less competitive keyword categories. But its not in the same league as IBLs once the category becomes competitive.

[SEOforGoogle]

<shameless plug alert>
I wrote an article on this to help explain...

Why You Need Outbound Links

<end of shameless plug>