How Outbound Links Help You Build Authority

Writing by Nick Stamoulis ShareThis

A: I wouldn’t recommend closing comments in an attempt to “hoard” your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.

This blog post may be about PageRank sculpting, but it’s really about something else: The value of outbound linking.

Many site owners believe they should just link to themselves internally. That’s not very smart, actually. Outbound linking really helps you in a number of ways.

If done smartly, it can increase your PageRank
Again, if done smartly, your human visitors will see you as someone who is an authority who is willing to link to other sites if they have value
You’ll be seen by search engine bots and humans as a high value site
Your site becomes more social and you’ll get more participation from others
Outbound links can sometimes leave an automatic trackback on another website, which can deliver additional traffic to your site

Reserving all of your links to internal pages may seem like a smart thing to do, but it’s really not. The linking strategy is one that ecompasses a variety of internal and outbound links that shows your site visitors that you are willing to share useful and valuable high authority resources with them.

June 16, 2009
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4 Comments
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Link Building

4 Responses to “How Outbound Links Help You Build Authority”

Ammon Johns says:

June 17, 2009 at 6:40 pm

Point one is incorrect: “If done smartly, it can increase your PageRank”.

PageRank is purely and solely a measure of INBOUND links, without exception. Who you link to could lower your PageRank if you linked to what Google term ‘a bad neighborhood’, but can never, ever, raise it by virtue of outbound links.

But what outbound links can do is raise your ‘Hub score’.

As you probably know, it was Jon Klienberg who first discussed ‘hubs and authorities’ in terms of linking patterns, and how they applied to information retrieval. IBM’s CLEVER project was the search engine built on that research, though it could not calculate topical hubs and authorities in real time, and the process was deemed too intensive to calculate in real time.

You may also know that Teoma is the search engine that was strongly based upon the CLEVER project, and that Apostolos claimed to have largely solved the issue of processing Hubs and Authorities in real-time according to search term used.

Google use Hub and Authority scores somewhat more loosely, just like PageRank is not topic-specific. Linking to any top resource can give your page a boost in its ‘Hub’ scoring. The natural counterpoint to PageRank itself which is largely a case of indicating great Authority resources.
Nick Stamoulis says:

June 17, 2009 at 6:54 pm

@Ammon Johns – Thanks for reading and the additional information. Our readers will enjoy this history so thanks for including that as well.
david says:

June 20, 2009 at 1:24 am

Im in favour of outbound links, anyone who runs a successful website does not try and hoard their links. Another point if you are in seo and you link to another seo company you may increase your possible exposure to a bad neighbourhood but if you dont do seo training it can be helpful if you are ranking for that keyword that you help your visitors by linking to someone that you consider an authority on the topic, not point trying to keep the visitors on the small probability they will contact you.
Nick Stamoulis says:

June 20, 2009 at 7:29 am

@david – So very true hoarding links is never a good strategy but being very careful of what sites you link to is so very important! Great additional points and thanks for reading!