Are Your Outbound Links Authoritative?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Or do you even have any outbound links? Should you?

Whether or not you have any outbound links depends a great deal on your editorial philosophy. Some old-style SEOs say that you shouldn’t. Others say that you should. I think it really matters on your goals and your style.

If you do choose to include outbound links, you should start by choosing links that make you look good. Don’t use any other kind of links. That is, your link partners should be chosen not on whether or not they are linking to you but on whether or not they provide your visitors with any real value. If you create outbound links that give value to your visitors then you will be seen as an authority in your field and you are more likely to receive inbound links that benefit you and that are given by other authorities within your niche. That’s when you know that you’ve arrived.

Here’s another way of thinking about it. Many webmasters will not link to you if every link on your website is self-serving. And, trust me, they can tell. But if you have selfless links that point to the other sources online within your niche then it appears that you are not simply promoting yourself but promoting your niche, even if it leads your visitors to other places online. That’s how you become an authority, and authority sites are well liked by a lot of different people. They tend to linked to more often and the links are valuable links. Those links increase your PageRank and further serve to increase your authority within your niche. Look at it as a sort of Web karma. Build your own authority with outbound links.