Outbound Links

I hear they help but can't find anything definitive

[taxpod]

I've read through tons of posts here and elsewheres regarding the need for outbound links. I do understand what a dangling link is but for the life of me can't understand why someone wouldn't have at least site navigation on every page.

I'm having trouble really understanding exactly HOW it is that outbound links help you. I have tons of them as part of my site is an index. But I've moved away from posting outside-site-bound links from my top several layers. I've done this to emphasize some pages rather than to keep PR inside my site. Now I'm wondering if every single blessed page should have some sort of outbound link.

I don't see anything definitive on Google or elsewhere that specifically says outbound links cause your site to improve in the serps because ... Nor can I find anything that says a lack of outbound links will hurt you because ...

I link to everybody I can as I fully believe in the ideal of a fully intertwined web. Or maybe cause I'm stupid. I guess I see the why of search engines desiring sites that link to others. But I'm just not getting the HOW they actually turn that into value for the linker via the serps. Brett or someone can you help. I don't think pointing to other threads is gonna do it.

And as a related issue, should I only be linking to the top PR sites on my best PR pages? I know they won't link back as they don't link to anyone. Which is part of the reason I'm confused about this. All the top sites in my category don't carry links until you get down 6 or more layers. And these sites are all PR8s at the top level.

[buckworks]

I'm not sure how everything falls into place regarding page rank here, but I DO know that outbound links can help your own page because the link text along with a well-crafted description can add tasty spider food to your own body text.

[taxpod]

Can't you work what you would put in anchor text into your own content? I mean if you want to put "tasty blue widgets" into your text, you don't have to link to "TastyBlueWidgets dot com."

[stevenha]

Regarding outbound links to external sites, I believe the hypothetical benefit is something related to this:

Two published methods (hilltop and clever project) describe how to implement "hubs and authorities", where it is beneficial to your ranking, if your page is considered an "authority".

Keep in mind, that I don't know if Google tries to identify authority pages ( using the hilltop or clever definitions, or variations thereof). But suppose hypothetically that they do now partially, or might implement it in the future.

One factor that the hilltop and clever methods share, is that an Authority page must link to at least one other external authority page. ( An authority page appear also must appear on an external "hub" page's lists of links to multiple authorities... plus a few other conditions).

Suppose you wanted to prepare your page for this possible situation. How do you find what is another authority page? Teoma uses a hubs and authorities method. Teoma will show you the major authority pages for your keyword topic, and its Resources list shows you the hubs. So, you could choose one page from Teoma's results (authority pages), link to it, and then try to get one external Resource (hub) page to link to your page. That seems to be the minimum entry conditions for consideration as an "authority".

If Google were to implement a variation of this, they'd probably also mix some PageRank considerations into the algorithm. Anyway, this is all hypothetical, and possibly not currently pertinent to Google.

[ciml]

I agree 100% Steven; one of Googleguy's most interesting comments here seems to allude to this.
[webmasterworld.com...]

[Markus]

IMO GoogleGuy's post makes it pretty clear that they don't have any hub-like score implemented in their algos. His statements are all about what they can, what they could and so on. Google relies on websites linking to each other. So, what would you expect a Google employee to say in public.

Ranking by identifying hubs simply doesn't fit into Google. Kleinberg's HITS for example analyzes a subgraph of the web based on actual search queries to identify hubs. This takes quite some time and leads to problems regarding scalability. But scalability was one of the most important things to Larry and Sergey at the time they created Google. At Google, everything is preprocessed. PageRank is computed in advance. And the inverse index does nothing but providing a set of ordered pages for each and every word that is to be found on the web. Implementing any kind of sophisticated hub rank would be inconsistant with one of Goolge's basic principles.

The same applies to Hilltop, although I don't think that Hilltop is really about ranking hubs. It is more like PageRank where only expert pages are considered to calculate "link popularity". Nontheless, there are to many things to be calculated after the query which is one of the weaknesses of Hilltop.

BTW, I use Google because it's fast and the results are good. If I click on the first result and I don't find the information that I want, I go back to Goolge's SERP and check the second result. I don't want to search for links on the pages that Google finds for me. I don't know your search behaviour, but I don't need any hub rank.

[buckworks]

<<Can't you work what you would put in anchor text into your own content?>>

Yes, you could, but there's limits to how much you can do that without starting to look silly to human visitors. A link to another site provides a logical reason to add a few more keyword-rich lines to your page.

[taxpod]

Thanks guys. That's a bit more enlightening. I guess you could say that nobody can point to a known specific reason right this second to make sure you are linked to the top sites in your categories. But as anyone who has found themselves behind the curve at Google knows, better to take their advice ahead of a change to the PR or serp ranking change!