Removed an outbound Link...

... lost many positions after one week

[power_iq]

Hi folks!

I have a very well listed Website for five or six specific Keywords and some Phrases. No Spam, clean and with relevant content (in my eyes) :-)

I had one outgoing Link from my Index Page to an competitor.
I removed this one Link last week. Now, the positions for MANY Keywords are going down. One Key lost one Site, another six sites... :-(

But most Keys are falling down are not in anchor of my outgoing Link.

Coould the removal be the reason for my problem?

What do you mean!

Thanks, Thomas

[power_iq]

No one an idea how important an outbound Link could be? :-/

[ganderla]

One of my pages (in Yahoo) has an outbound link to a article on cnn.com that is very relevant. The title of the page that I link to is the phrase that I get great rankings on. The anchor text is not the phrase, but the phrase is right after the anchor text.

Very strange

[webnewton]

Giving an outbound to a related webpage which Google identifies as an expert on the topic has great relavence according to the hiltop algorightm.
The link you've removed is definately considered an expert web page on the topic you're trying to optimize your page for. Since you'd linked to the relavent site you're site too was considered an expert and you're doing good on SERPS.
Try reincluding the link. If it's that of your competitor then try putting link of some other expert of the topic or some goverment site link which could be considered important by google.

[power_iq]

hi webnewton!

thanks for your awnser :-)

I reincluded the link 4 days ago. So let's see whats going on.

best wishes, tom

[Munster]

Let us know power...