Outbound link credit

Does it exist?

[JackieLane]

Any word on whether or not search engines place any weight on the outbound links, and/or the outbound links' format, leaving one's site? If a site links, outbound, consistently to quality relavent sites, does this help at all? Or, is this completely out of the picture as it could so easily be manipulated (anyone could benefit by placing good links on their site)?

Also, does the format of outbound links matter? For example, are affiliate sites hurt by the long tracking URLs / redirection they use in their outbound links?

For example, instead of linking out to other sites, without any tracking,(www.altruistic-outbound-link.com) for the sake of beefing up a content site, you have an outbound link using a long, ugly tracking URL (www.network.com?tracking-code-looks-like-spam/blah-blah).
Does it matter what the outbound link looks like?

So, to recap, does outbound credit exist? Or, if there is no credit, is there, instead, a lack of penalty for a site that uses links looking like www.altrusitic-link.com (if say the sites that use outbound links with long tracking URLs are penalized)? Any feel on how significant this is?

Many thanks in advance ~ Jackie

[edited by: martinibuster at 10:15 pm (utc) on Oct. 27, 2005]
[edit reason] clarified post [/edit]

[ganderla]

I tested this theory on one of my pages. I linked to the top 2 results in Google with the 3 word phrase I was targeting. I have been bouncing around in the results from nowhere to 3rd page to 10th and with the latest update, I am now 3rd. It could be other factors too, but I think it helped.

[caveman]

...whether ... the search engines place ... weight on outbound links...

Sure they do. They place a weight on pretty much everything they find. ;-)

Some people think that when in doubt, add outbound links to a page. I think that's nonsense, because it approaches things from the standpoint of how best to manipulate the search engines. A page should be what a page should be. The SE's have an uncanny way of determining what is natural for a given page in a given kind of site.

Having said that, because SE's do take all things into account, what an outbound link can do for you is give credit to a page for being a good Netizen (linking to other valued pages). Also, one might anticipate that the anchor text of the link out, and the page linked to, say something about the linking page. ;-)

[tedster]

the anchor text of the link out, and the page linked to, say something about the linking page

That's an important factor about anchor text that many people overlook -- yes, it says something about the target page, but it is also an on-page factor for the page where it exists. And it's a lot more important than regular text. It's much easier for your page to look like a keyword stuffer with anchor text than it is with regular text.

I've seen a lot of so-called "SEO checklists", and they often forget anchor text as an on-page factor. And in my experience, it's a pretty strong one.

[etrader]

Hi, is it possible to open a new browser window as an exteranl link and still get it indexed - I guess with HTML rather than JScript?

I want to add links off my pages but do not want people leaving the site - opening a new window is the solution?

[caveman]

Sure.

<A HREF="http://www widgets" TARGET="_blank" TITLE="">

SE's have no trouble reading links that open new windows this way.

[tedster]

If you want to use javascript so you can size the new window, this approach also works for search engines:

<a href="page.html" onClick="PopUpFunction('page.html');return false">