Comments on: How Outbound Links Help You Build Authority

By: Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:29:48 +0000

@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!

By: david

david — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:24:52 +0000

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.

By: Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:54:53 +0000

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

By: Ammon Johns

Ammon Johns — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:40:23 +0000

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.