External links

How do you decide which to link to

[jsnow]

I am looking to link out to "authority sites" with the relevant anchor text to try and improve rankings. I am just not sure how best to decide which sites are best to link to. Do I look for high ranking sites for the topic of the page or is there some other magic way of doing it?

[johnser]

Search for the KW your page is targeting in DMOZ.
Take the first X results and link to them with your KW as anchor text
J

[thumpcyc]

Hey Johnser, you are saying that a search of The DMOZ returns authority Sites, well, I would consider that true, it is what the DMOZ Search considers authority sites, but not what Google Considers authority sites, and as how the DMOZ does not crawl the web(except for the editors whom I have not heard of recording of who links to who), I would think the DMOZ could not care less who links to those sites.

I would consider the sites that a google search returns for the key words would be the sites G considers authority on the keywords, and would be the ones that jsnow is looking for.

In my opinion, Google could not care less what a DMOZ search considers an authority site. The Google Directory uses the DMOZ Directory for its data (altho not updated Often), but as far as I know, G does not use anything from the results returned from a DMOZ Search.

Thumpcyc

[edited by: thumpcyc at 9:21 pm (utc) on July 13, 2004]

[Poppy122]

Try searching for your keywords here,
[google.com...]

What bigger authority than Uncle Sam?

[jsnow]

Never seen the unclesam bit before!

Is this considered authority sites?

I know it is important to link out to authority sites with anchor text. So is Google top results, DMOZ or some other source?

[Watcher of the Skies]

I would stay as far away from the perpetual BS in DMOZ as possible, especially in the commercial sphere where vested interests and iffy listings rule the roost. For example, the results for searching for "DESTINATION hotels" yields:

3.) Joe Blow Plastics Factory: Manufacturer of plastics used by HOTELS and airlines. Located in DESTINATION and.......

And this is reviewed by humans. (I'll resist the temptation for a joke here.)

To address the question, you could link to high-ranking sites in Google but you run the very real risk that SOME of those may have stuffed a skeleton or two in their closet in order to get there - often a linking issue. If they go POOF! and you're linking to them, and others like that, you just might go down the same slippery slope...

[stevenb 1959]

How I determine who I link to:
I link to a webpage that isnot a links page from a webpage of mine that isnot a links page. The page I link to must be #1 in G search engine for its search phrase as it is linking back to my webpage which is #1 for a search phrase competing with 1 to 5 million search results. That is how I determine authority by closing my links with authority and it helps ALOT. I get 50+ link requests per day and I may establish a new link once in a 3-4 week period. I donot go looking for links. I donot want to sound cocky but the smart link partners can see and realize the potential of linking with me, but there are alot of smart people who try to screw me too. I can look at there webpage and tell what their best resault they are being found for in Google search and I can tell through this and link structure and a few other things whether they are worth linking too.
Just my opinion
Steve

[stevenb 1959]

There was a directory talked about here and it had great PR for it categories. I research my link structure and linkers and possible link partners(past and present) and from this I knew a couple weeks before it happened that there PR was going deep south.
So I recommend if your goal is links then know your link partners throughly.
Steve

[jsnow]

A bit of confusion here I think! I am not looking for the links to be reciprocated, there is benefit in linking out to authority sites in a KW sector using that anchor text. What I want to do is find out how best to identify them sites!

[hugo_guzman]

This is a great topic for discussion.

Personally, I would look for sites that are well established in the "real world". For example, if you have a sports related site, it may be a good idea to link to a espn.com page. I operate a shipping consulting site, so I chose to link to FEDEX and UPS.

If there are some "real world" authority sites like these in your specific industry, I would advise linking to them, because you can more or less sure that you will not suffer any penalties by linking to them. The really large multinational corporate sites do not need to use questionable seo tactics and they are pretty much entrenched in the top spots of Google's search engine results. If there aren't any of these mega sites in your industry, you you'll have to really do your homework!

[johnser]

You could always run the Google API and extract the dmoz sites from the top 10 rsults returned. We've found they're fairly accurate theme-wise.

[Total Paranoia]

I still find it hard to believe that Google reward websites for linking out to on theme authorities.

I guess I need to start experimenting with this.

Trouble is, Google will probably reverse the algo in 3 months time and we will all find ourselves removing those outbounds. :(

[johnser]

>>>we will all find ourselves removing those outbounds

Possibly but not according to BT's 26 steps which make a lot of sense on this issue

[pmkpmk]

You could always run the Google API and extract the dmoz sites from the top 10 rsults returned.

In order only to use these, or in order to discard them?

[johnser]

In order only to use these