outbound links and the relevancy of sites pointing to

how important and how is relevancy determined with outbounds links

[Randu]

Ok, this is my first one, so I did my homework and still am not sure about this: I am not clear from some previous discussions about outbound links and any potential for being penalized in PR or otherwise if the outbound links are deemed unrelated or not relevant. I am afraid that most of my outbound links that will of interest to my site visitors and are being checked by anything but a human being at search engines, will potentially be deemed not relevant or unrelated to my site. Would just having a one word overlap be enough to have it be deemed relevant or not relevant? For a number of the links it would not be possible to have more than a one word overlap (between my site and theirs). These are links that are useful to my visitors and that’s why I want to include them.

Many Thanks.

[Marketing Guy]

Welcome to WW Randu! :)

Firstly, keep in mind that a lot of what discussed here is conjecture and theory and that a lot of people seem to know what they are talking about, in fact have no hard evidence to back up their theories.

Personally, I have seen no proof that linking out to other sites can have a negative effect on your site.

The one exception that has perhaps to some extent been proven is external outbound links to link farms and mass interlinking of sites.

My advice would be to link to whoever you want and don't worry about it. If it's good for your users, then do it.

In terms of the link text you use, it can have several effects.

Firstly the link text can be of benefit to the site you are linking to.

Also, using your own keywords within the link text can help your pages rank well for those keywords.

Hope this helps. :)
Scott

[Randu]

Thanks Scott. Guess I won't worry too much about it. The reason I even brought it up was that almost everytime I would see a past discussion about outbound links, people would say something like as long as they are pointing to "relevant" sites. It just got me wondering. As far as the text in the links, I won't be able to use keywords in them.

I appreciate your input.

Randy

[Receptional Andy]

It seems quite natural to me for sites to link to a diverse range of other sites, even those that are not directly related to the site doing the linking. There only seems to be potential problems with links to banned or known spam sites.

[edited]for relevancy (by me ;))[/edited]

[Randu]

Thanks RA. I will go a head and use the links as I have planned.

Not sure what this is referring to at the bottom of your email:

[edited]for relevancy (by me ;))[/edited]

Randy

[Receptional Andy]

>>Not sure what this is referring to

I didn't read your message correctly the first time (I thought it was about the relevancy of sites linking to you) so my original post wasn't relevant. I added the edit line in case anyone read the first message.