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Are outbound links good / necessary in order to improve my pagerank and my listing in Google?
My site has between 20-30 inbound links with pages with pageranks of 3 to 7. Is it important to link back to them?
Another question, how long does it take to get a pagerank in Google (it is grey at the moment)?
Thanks,
Chris
being a hypocrite, I try and NOT give an outbound link unless it is absolutely essential.
the whole point of running a business is to keep within your shop/store/domain etc
why send them elsewhere.
obviously this is not the line I use when trying to get inbound links.
Shak
Very few people outside Google know for sure if outbound links improve the PR, but some of us suspect that it does, because our own experiences point in that direction. And indeed it would be logical. The idea would be that outbound links to relevant sites with good PR help to establish your own website as an authority in its field.
But apart from that you should think of your visitors before you think of the search engines. They should always have some good links to get away from a page. Sooner or later they will leave it anyway and it's best if they leave it in a positive and constructive way. So give them good and relevant links. Internal links or outbound links as best you can. Links that lead them to answers to those questions that are raised in their minds by reading your page. The better you treat your visitors the more of them will return.
You should only link back to those other website if these links are relevant for your visitors. (Or if you have promised the other webmasters to do so!)
No one can promise you for sure when you will get a PR. You may hope to have one at the next big update which might be expected in a couple of weeks.
Troels
There might be a benefit to having outgoing links in other parts of the algorithm though. I personally recommend it because it is the way that the web is supposed to be. Having good on topic outgoing links, even to your competitors, can improve your standing in the eyes of your customers.
In a bricks and mortar case, there is an industry where they sell widgets (that you sit in and paddle around on the ocean) where two of the most well respected companies in the area have talked me out of purchasing their products and suggest that another store has something that would serve me better. The other store was high pressure, I bought what I needed from them but the store that wanted to make sure I got the right item earned my loyalty, and more importantly my trust.
If you are a good resource, you will make it into peoples bookmarks, and you will get the repeat business.
Somewhat over a year ago it was speculated on WW that placing one or two outgoing links with keyword titles, to high PR sites would eventually be considered beneficial to your own site's PR and/or SERP's. But by the summer of this year that theory had been totally abandoned.
I agree there's no reason to think that linking to other sites will boost your PR. The whole concept of PR is predicated on the value of incoming links.
But I know that a lot of people do think that having links to *relevant* sites may well help establish your relevance for a particular key word. For my relatively competitive single keyword (1,350,000 results), most of the top ten sites have outbound links to relevant sites on their index pages.
By linking to that site that webmaster is now (slightly) working for *me* whenever pursuing links to that site.
This is a fairly extreme case where linking to a site with a highly motivated webmaster can bring me benefit via a "seeding" of PR, but there are other cases too where outside sites can be looked at as almost a part of your own link structure.
In other words, if I could roll back the clock and make a link exchange with Yahoo the day they came online...
being a hypocrite, I try and NOT give an outbound link unless it is absolutely essential.
Shakil,
remind me to never link to your site! ;)
... meaning that a link to your own site would not be "absolutly essential"? ;)
I'm not sure about this. In theory, if you are advising people to go to another site for <green widgets> then you are in effect saying that your site is not relevant for this item.... so google may follow your advise and list the other site in the serps above yours!
I suspect the algo only credits anchor text for the page it is pointing to, and not the page it is on.
In theory, if you are advising people to go to another site for <green widgets> then you are in effect saying that your site is not relevant for this item....
You're not saying anything of the kind. You're just pointing to another resource.
I think Buckworks' comment that "The anchor text and description you give to the outgoing link will add spider food to your own page" makes a lot of sense. In the academic world, outbound links are often citations that provide supporting evidence for the page's content. It's hard to imagine that the Ph.D.'s at Google would turn their backs on years of academic conditioning by ruling that a citation was an admission of weakness. :-)
Would Google or other SEs want to see a site that only has incoming links and no outgoing? Would this be part of the algo? Who the heck knows.
And like anything else in this business -- it all depends. If you can closely control your selling environment (no or few outgoing links) and be successful then who can argue with that.
Does it help PR? I don't think a "More on Blue Widgets" link would have anything to do with PR but it might be an important factor in all that on-page criteria that we sometimes overlook in our race for more PR. After all, keywords are keywords, keywords in link text are keywords in linktext -- the page is somewhat relevant to "Blue Widgets."
Jim
Would Google or other SEs want to see a site that only has incoming links and no outgoing? Would this be part of the algo?
It certainly could be part of the "on-page factors" algorithm if Google's own studies have shown that sites with outbound links are more likely to be authorities on their topics than sites without such links.
And it's in Google's own interests to favor sites with outbound links, since Google's "unique selling proposition"--PageRank--is based on widespread linking.
And it's in Google's own interests to favor sites with outbound links, since Google's "unique selling proposition"--PageRank--is based on widespread linking.
I believe that this is the whole point here. Google would never encourage sites to take isolationist attitudes. They want you to link to other sites to feed the pagerank algorithm.
And to get back to the initial question, my links pages often show up high in the SERPs, above pages with higher PR.
The site had almost no outbound links for about two years. I added a page of outbound links (which has grown to to many pages over the past month or so). The SE's like the pages and they get first or second page results for the most astonishing list of search terms. It's like a sheet of new suggested PPC keywords, but broader than Overture etc. Tracking visitor behavior, I see that a reasonable number of link page visitors do move deeper into the site and get exposed to our selling messages.
The outbound links have led to some valuable new business relationships for us in the category and related areas, generated valuable new inbound links, and given us a more dynamic view of how visitors behave.
It's a subtle thing, but my sense is that Google has treated our site better since we put the outbound links up.
As for how this effects your standing with Google, I've noticed a certain reactionary stance at Google, a sense of trying to take the web back to the good old days when it was about having fun rather than making money (not that making money is a bad thing, mind). So I think that whether or not it helps your PR or even is in the algo now, you can probably expect it to matter at some point.
Freejung, your observations about the "spirit" of the web are right on! I always return to that kind of thinking as a touchstone. Fads may come and go on the web, but fundementals will win out over the long haul.
Considerations such as unique quality content (as Europeforvistors always points out), good experience for the visitor, easy access to relevant information, no bull****, etc meet both the SE's objectives and the visitors. Any SE that does not reflect these values in its SERPs will surely fade away.
Troels
Your english was perfectly clear. It's been so long since I searched into Yahoo's directory I'd forgotten how it was structured. Now that I have looked, I see what you mean - if I keep expanding my links list, it would have to become organized like that.
On the other hand, getting a bit more SEO, I'd probably be better off if I built a full new page of "editorial content" around each link or group of links. Brett says, one new page every day..
If a link on a page is off theme, then I think the anchor text is ignored for the page it is on
This is simply not true.
There are thousands upon thousands of pages returned in the SERPs for keywords that only appear in the anchor text of outbound links, whether on theme or not.
Just wanted to point out this interesting GoogleGuy quote that I picked up in another thread. In it he makes reference to a component of the algo, while addressing the topic of hoarding PR:
It's pretty easy to spot domains that are hoarding PageRank; that can be just another factor in scoring. If you work really hard to boost your authority-like score while trying to minimize your hub-like score...
He made a reference to an "authority-like" score then made reference to a "hub-like" score, wherein a web site is given points for being a hub.
There is a benefit to you, and the web in general, when linking out. It establishes you as an authority hub.
How much benefit is arguable, but it's a benefit.
It just makes intuitive sense that authority hubs are needed by the entire structure, are more valuable, and thus should better survive changes in the SE's. Whether or not you get google brownie points, it makes your site more useful to all.
As freejung noted; "you can probably expect it to matter at some point".
The have been several threads worrying about having all their eggs in one google basket. It's a valid concern. All the more reason to ensure that their sites offer basic value to the web so that they would be included in whatever comes along next.
No one is wrong. Google just won't give you any credit for something that they don't recognize. You make your choice, they make theirs. You are doing it to be useful for your users that come to your site for other reasons. You obviously knew that you were hiding your links from google, so you should be happy that your plan is working.
Dave
