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G) Outbound Links:
From every page, link to one or two high ranking sites under that particular keyword. Use your keyword in the link text (this is ultra important for the future).
Why is this important? and why is it ultra important for the future?
A site that is basically an affiliate of mine has PR6 with only four PR4-5 backlinks. By contrast I have 104 backlinks many of which are PR5 and 6, and one PR7, but only have a PR5.
The only difference I can see is that they have ten links on the bottom of every page pointing to very high ranking authority sites in the area. I was thinking that this might be why they are doing so well and reading this thread has made me think even more so that this could be the case.
you're linking to external sites (not affiliated with any of your sites), I'd use whatever anchortext seemed the most natural to you
Googleguy, does this imply we've got to be a lot more careful about the anchor text used to link within our site or to other sites we own?
What Brett says makes sense and I know a lot of sites are building outward links purely for this purpose, but I'm a bit uncomfortable about it. If this works then all SEOs will be building links to relevant authority sites in their niche. As the authority sites are unlikely to reciprocate the links isn't it the case that in the long term our sites will lose PR, the authority sites will improve on their (already high) PR, and they will ultimately feature even better in Google?
Is that a bad thing for the user? IMHO, that's the main consideration from the search engine's point of view.
Is that a bad thing for the user?
Yes, it is a bad thing. It's a very bad thing. If I type in "brandname" or "brandname widget" I want to go to Brandname's site... not some affiliate with millions of spammy links.
And if I'm looking for a web designer I want to get web designer sites in SERPS, not sites selling ladies underwear (where I have to fumble around to find a link to a webdesigner in micro size font at the bottom of the page)
not sites selling ladies underwear
Yeah, that could be a major productivity loss, Macro.;) It does seem that this is less of a problem now - those old SERPs were pretty awful.
Yes, it is a bad thing. It's a very bad thing. If I type in "brandname" or "brandname widget" I want to go to Brandname's site... not some affiliate with millions of spammy links.
My post (and the one to which I was responding) referred to "authority sites," not to affiliate sites with millions of spammy links. If Google can't tell the difference between the two, that's a problem, but the principle of giving higher search rankings to authority sites is likely to be good for users.
Moreover, I believe that Google's warning about linking to bad neighborhoods should be removed since it inhibits many webmasters, like me, to sites that we feel might be useful to our visitors but are not the traditional authority sites like universities and governments, since we are not sure. We just don't want to be penalized for doing something we thought would help the visitors and Google should not penalize sites for linking to questionable sites unless almost all outward link is to such sites. This will allow newer and better sites to become authority instead of the same traditional authorities carrying on.
Moreover, I believe that Google's warning about linking to bad neighborhoods should be removed since it inhibits many webmasters, like me, to sites that we feel might be useful to our visitors but are not the traditional authority sites like universities and governments, since we are not sure. We just don't want to be penalized for doing something we thought would help the visitors and Google should not penalize sites for linking to questionable sites unless almost all outward link is to such sites. This will allow newer and better sites to become authority instead of the same traditional authorities carrying on.
I don't think this is a serious problem, because "bad neighborhood" sites are unlikely to receive many legitimate links. They certainly aren't the kinds of sites that are likely to become authorities.
...So now Overture is no longer accepting business from this business type on the web so I figure this would be a great time to trade my page rank with other websites so I can utilize it on my other non related websites. The mnore I exchange links and put on outbound links the faster my unique visitors via the search engines climb. So I conclude by this that outbound links are very important and I feel the amount of outbound links and themed to mine has a factor in the search engine placement of serps too.
I have seen this too, often times it's because your site has a type of authority rank, so when you use terms in links (in and out) you'll often rank much higher than the sites which you link too, when their content is 100% related and yours only has the key phrase in anchor once.
Two cents at 1:00 am is worth less:)
It would be an all or nothing type thing
There go all the sites that link with the anchor text "click here".
