Linking To Authority Sites

[flanok]

I have tried this a few times but it never roduced and better results for me and in fact was always worse.

I decided a week ago that it must have been other reasons for drop in rankings, so I began going through 3 sites, 1 which is a blog and the other 2 which has many information pages and started to link from the content to authority encyclopedia sites and directly to suppliers I had referenced within the information piece.

Once again all 3 sites have dropped big style.

So i have a question

Has anyone done this before and found the drop temporary whilst google revaluates the site?

Or is linking to authority sites just a myth and what you gain from the link you lose in draining page rank?

I am sitting here, not sure whether to take away the links away or hang on for another week, to see if i gradually move back up.

The same thing occurred on all 3 sites to different levels, so for me it would be too much of a coincidence for it to be any other factors.

Mark

[tedster]

First, I'd say you should link out because it helps your visitors, and not because it might be a good ranking technique.

Second, adding links to already published blog articles could be a problem. If your articles link out when you publish them, that's natural. If you add a lot of external links later on, then it looks more like an SEO move. See Natural vs. Un-natural - in SEO and the Google Algorithm [webmasterworld.com]

Just ideas here - no hard and fast rules. But Google has a very complex ranking system today. Checklist style approaches for techniques, such as "do A, do B, don't do C" aren't so valuable as they may once have been. Essentially, Google is working so that it's easier to create quality than to imitate it.

Google often seems to react negatively to tweaking and tinkering. They watch history and changes, rather than just ranking by what's on the page in the current moment.

[flanok]

Hi Ted
Yes I know about doing things for my visitor hence adding quality outgoing links. Of course even if I did not gain anything, I can see the benefits of linking out, but as I see it, I am currently being punished for doing it.

If we were looking at what is natural linking out? Then it would suggest never to update your site or pages for the benefit of visitors, because it may be seen by google as been done for SEO purposes.

As far as I am concerned if it helps your visitors, then you should not be penalised whether you do it right first time, or you improve the pages at a later date.

The way things stand, it looks like I will be removing all outgoing links, to retain the page rank.

[tedster]

Blogs absolutely thrive on external links in their articles, and even in their templates - it's almost a defining sign.

With the volatility of Google ranking in recent weeks, I would be very cautious in assuming that the links you added are definitely the cause of the ranking changes. But I certainly understand the need to investigate and reverse rankings drops if you can.

Could you address your situation with a more graduated approach? It sounds like you've added a lot of links at one time to three different sites, and now you intend to remove them, also all at once. Might you keep the very best of them - the ones that really do serve your visitors? Or experiment with just one of the sites first?

[flanok]

Hi
a good reply. which makes sense.
I did add a lot of links at one time, so this may be a factor, some pages had 2 links out but most only had one link.
I believe all links out were good, and already the best outgoing links I could do. In fact if anything there was much room to add even more outging links, a certain encyclopedia site got most of them.

I have over 100 blog pages site 1,
100 news pages site 2 and
45 information pages site 3.

Many of these pages are several years old and all unique, written by me or a guest writer. But even though i quoted sources or explained certain things i never linked to the official source or to encyclopdia pages, to expand the knowlege until now.

So I need to decide to leave all or remove links from one site, to measure any improvement.
I think i will sleep on it, if I saw some sort of gradual movement back as an indication, this would guide me to do the right thing.

Thanks again
Mark