Outbound links

helping or hurting?

[Tonearm]

I have an online retail site, and I have the same 5 outbound links on every page since they are part of my header. They link to Verisign, Visa, Mastercard, and a couple other similar ones. I don't have any other outbound links on the site.

I've read how outbound links can hurt you by sending your PR elsewhere, but I've also read that they can help you. What do you think they're doing in this situation?

[prairie]

Presumably you're linking directly to their homepages?

If the content at the end of the link doesn't relate well to your own content, I wouldn't do it personally, but that's just one opinion.

Tentatively:

* If you're selling something related to credit card processing it could be a good move;

* If you're selling, say red widgets you put in the garden, it's probably not helping any, and may be hurting.

[Jon_King]

I don't think they will hurt you (much), but a few outgoings' to authority on-topic sites can help.

[Tonearm]

Two of the links go to a page about me offsite that does list my domain. The other three go to home pages. I'm selling room decor type stuff.

[prairie]

Non reciprocal links to you are probably better than reciprocal links. If the section about you is important (and why wouldn't it be!), perhaps re-write it (so you don't have duplicate content across domains) and put it up on the retail site in question.

[webnewton]

I don't think they're hurting you very much but otherwise they're no value to you. Why by providing a link are you giving a chance to the surfer to divert from your site to thiers when you're not getting anything out of it.

[Tonearm]

Visa and Mastercard actually require the link but I don't think I'll conform to that any longer. The Verisign seal says "Click to Verify".

[submitx]

My suggestion is not to include out going links at least on your main page, if you don't have to.

[Jon_King]

>>My suggestion is not to include out going links at least on your main page, if you don't have to.

Totally disagree.

[chrisnrae]

IMHO, a few outbound links to good, quality sites are a good thing. Not only that, it's looks pretty natural to an engine.

[vitaly]

I think outbound links are one of the three main criteria SEs use to “understand” what your page is about. Both anchor text that is on your page and the context of the page you’re referring to are important.

The other two criteria are your page content and inbound links (both anchor text and page content).

[Jon_King]

>>Visa and Mastercard - No good.

>>Both anchor text that is on your page and the context of the page you’re referring to are important - Good.