Question - is it sufficient to have a page of outbound links, rather than linking out across a variety of pages?

I think linking out across variety of pages, to quality and relevant sites. And I think the most beneficial are in-content links whose anchor is related/synonim/exact to keyphrase which that page targets.

A variety of pages, from contextual content with relevance.

Best done in my opinion using a formal resources section along with specific citations re: author, published date of specific relevant content, etc.

Well the difficulty with that is that my content is highly specialized,unique - and I wrote it. The only person I'm going to site in my main content is me :).

I'm still considering a 'links' page, something I've never had on my main site. Partially because my site is really starting to look like an authority recently and I'm thinking an external links page may help cement that. But I'd be much more inclined if it helped my rankings.

You may know more than anyone else in the world about topic A. But surely there are related topics B, C and D that your readers may also be interested in but you don't know quite as much. And then there are topics E and F that you took it for granted your readers already knew backward and forward, because you learned them before embarking on topic A.

Oh. Oops. The question wasn't about readers. It was about serps. Never mind, then.

THere's lots of closely related topics that I would consider linking to. But you're suggesting I start publishing content on those topics - and that I"m not prepared to do. I've got lots of information about my very narrow niche, branching out simply to link out to someone is a whole other story. Plus, adding that content is unlikely to be of interest to my visitors other than in passing. They're coming very specifically to read my content, related content just isn't that related.

If I was a plumber, I'd be prepared to link out to electricians on a links page. But starting to publish content on electricians isn't something I'm likely to do. that doesn't benefit me as being a plumbing authority.

Sounds like a links page isn't that big of a deal. And the outbound link strategy is fine if you're not the authority in the field.

No, not at all, I meant that those are your potential links. They're interested in your content, and after a while they realize that-- for example-- you're using a term that you assume they know but they've never heard of it. You'd rather have them detour to a link you gave them than wander off to hit g### wouldn't you? :)

Ah. But because I've got mad SEO skillz, I have individual pages for those terms. When I reference these terms in my articles....I link back to my own pages :).

Probably another difference is that when I write articles, I WRITE the freakin article. I don't give it a cursory overview, the reader gets an entire lecture, start to finish on it, ground up. So if there are any terms they weren't familiar with, they'd be well acquainted by the time they were done reading the article. In other words, I'm not writing articles with a general overview of a topic where I could link out on terms, I'm writing complete niche 101 articles.

Customers like it, I get comments. Nobody gives me links though.

I have individual pages for those terms. When I reference these terms in my articles....I link back to my own pages :).

but on these pages you could reveal/link the source for the definition in fine print. Maybe the definition is on Wikipeadia or you create a definitions site that becomes popular by itself and link to that.

Hi,
Do not confuse between inbound and outbound links. The links from other domains to your domain is inbound and vise versa is outbound. The OUTBOUND Link in no way has any role in SERP.

If you want to get some benefit from your articles you should submit it to some HIGH QUALITY Article directories. Also you can publish the articles somewhere where you believe your users go to read. If you want to give your users some information you can write more on the same topic and publish it on your own website for your website visitors.

regards
zabalex

I am also wondering about this Wheel. I have noticed as have others here large sites putting the around the web section on the bottom of their pages linking out to other authority sites. But how could you test this? Picking a single page adding a link out to an authority site then sit and wait seems like it could be a long wait. Plus with all the Google updates lately actually getting a concrete result may be impossible.

The OUTBOUND Link in no way has any role in SERP.

Are you saying that if a site about pink widgets links out to pills, porn, and gambling that those "OUTBOUND" links won't have any role in the SERPs of the site linking to them?

The OUTBOUND Link in no way has any role in SERP.

People that I believe are experts here have said exactly the opposite.

If you want to get some benefit from your articles you should submit it to some HIGH QUALITY Article directories.

I might as well eat my meals at high quality garbage dumps. There simply isn't any such thing. Article directories are the playground of the low end web spammer.

My main money site does exactly this for 3 years, I have about 2000 pages 3/4 of them link to 1 individual site only with no other outbound links going from each page. Pages are strictly on the topic/theme of the given website and are dofollow.

Some do rank for low competition keywords mostly brand names but as high as spot 6-7 mostly page #2-3 if any. Overall it feels like you get some benefit but something is missing. A lot of those pages if not all have 0 IBL. If the link is affiliated here is the funny part, it GETS PR most of the time.

I have never tried to build links to those but the ones with user input(comments/reviews) are the ones that rank for the brand name of the given website. I will experiment with some back linking to the better pages and let u know in a month if I don't forget.

PS. When I got my OOP for 2 years those were the only ranking pages. Which was cool.

The OUTBOUND Link in no way has any role in SERP

That right there made me spit coffee! LOL

I have put up 250 word "Coming Soon" type pages, explaining what the future site is going to be all about, and included 4-5 contextually and topically relevant links "to let the engines know what the site is about" and ranked in the top 20 on that alone!

I fully believe outbound links are just as important as inbound links, and we link out just as often as we link within.

I have to agree with mhansen:

...and included 4-5 contextually and topically relevant links "to let the engines know what the site is about" and ranked in the top 20 on that alone!

I've done that with a couple of article pages, sort of "priming" them for google before I get a chance to write good content for them.

They ranked well once I got the content put up on them. They don't convert though... but they RANK well!

Also, it MIGHT be a good way to battle some of the low quality ehow pages and other stuff of that ilk.

My main "widgets" ecommerce page was being outranked by an ehow article. Much of the info they used they basically stole from me. They cited my site without giving a link (or maybe it was a nofollow link - can't remember now).

So I started a page that was a "how to" article that was designed to compete with that ehow article. Except I didn't have time to write it out so well. So, I basically linked out to other sites first, and then after a month or so, filled in the rest of the content.

while this page didn't rank really well itself, it did "knock out" the ehow article that was ranking above my ecommerce page - the page that I really want traffic to go to.

Ah. But because I've got mad SEO skillz, I have individual pages for those terms

This begs the question, if this were true, would you need confirmation to this?

Folks are suggesting that outbound links can increase your rankings in the serps.

:)

Folks are suggesting that outbound links can increase your rankings in the serps.

I've heard this too, and would like to see some confirmation of it in practice or in theory. There's nothing in any technical literature that suggests that outlinking can increase page rank. It could, in practice be a factor that google ads in to the mix, something like a "good citizen" factor.

But I have two websites with less than 5 links on the "resources page" and for one maybe 10 total outbound links spread across the site that do very well and rank number one for many competitive terms. Also it may be worth noting that on all my sites the link page is green listed on the toolbar. So maybe that is a factor? If you are green-listed you are still in the optimal range? Does that make sense?

I remember reading quite some time ago, Matt Cutts saying that sites with no outbound links are not optimal. Not optimal just means they can improve, but my results show that the level of improvement may only be marginal. For sure nobody is going to argue that sites with 100 outbound links per page optimal but what then is the "optimal" number?

So I'd like to hear where this rumor comes from.

So I'd like to hear where this rumor comes from.

A few well respected members here have indicated they've noticed emperically that they have seen slight rankings increases with outbound rankings.

A few well respected members here have indicated they've noticed emperically that they have seen slight rankings increases with outbound rankings.

Did they say what a slight increase was? And does adding outbound links mean they had zero and added ten or they already had a lot and then linked to some authority site like wikipedia or something?

Adding links when you have 1000 and adding links when you have zero are different things. And is it possible that this slight increase came from something else, like Panda tossing out a competitor?

Could the people who indicated this elaborate? Was it a controlled test or a random observation? In my experience rumors that lack precision are most likely just rumors.

I've been talking about this for the past ten years (through my blog on our business website). Some of you say I am "bleeding page rank". Hogwash.. I ignore pagerank and all of these other metrics because a new high quality site with low metrics/rankings today is a high quality ESTABLISHED site with higher rankings next year.

I link out to quality sites, respectfully ask for a link back.. sometimes I get the linkback, sometimes I dont.

I can get a new site to rank well just by linking out to a couple dozen high quality sites and in most cases 10-20% will link back to me.

Linking is a branding function first, a traffic building function second, and a seo function last. Don't ever forget that.

I link out to relevant sites often - I dont even ask for any link back in return. I put the links up for the user and if I feel that it would be of some use to them.

Has it helped in rankings, difficult to say 100% but I would say so. Has it hurt, no! Traffic is steadily on the rise as it has been for the last 18 months or so.

Another tip.. If you have a hobby site (I have one in the aviation industry), link to a news event from the homepage daily. I use link management software to auto publish the link so its quick to do. So for example I link to the top aviation news story every day, 5 days a week. I dont know if this has specifically helped but I know it has not hurted me in the slightest. Its great content for the end user (users constantly tell me they love it and some even suggest the news story for that day) and my rankings are #1 for my primary keywords. Thats another case against the whole "bleeding pagerank" paranoia. In the past seven years I've been doing the link to news and these are links to major news websites. I archive the links so they never are removed from the site. Thats literally thousands of outbound links to news sites. None of them link back (its not expected when you link for content reasons). No "bleed" here.

I link out to quality sites, respectfully ask for a link back.. sometimes I get the linkback, sometimes I dont.

Bingo...

Dear Webmaster - We recently linked to your site in an article at blahblahblah/murul/here. We found your coverage to be a great compliment to our article and very useful to our readers.

If you object to this link, please let us know and we will remove it immediately. If not, thanks again for the great resource.

Me, Webmaster
My Website Business

You don't even need to ask for a link... in fact... doing so may be the difference between the spam button, and someone actually coming to read your article.

Thanks for the examples. I did some research on this and found more or less what I was looking for; some credible stuff from 7 or 8 years ago. If it's true, then the outbound linking would fall into the underlying theory of google's algorithm as part of "authority sites". The idea being, to be an authority site, you need to link out to other sites. I've always thought that google manually identified authority sites (e.g. Yahoo.com as described in the original prototype), but this suggests that they may be algorithmically identified in some way. And it also suggests that "authority site" is not a boolean on/off, but that sites can have more or less authority. It also suggests that Panda may have "dialed up" the authority factor, allowing sites like wikipedia and about.com rank more highly post panda.

But again, if it's true, then as I understand it, not every site will be able to benefit by adding in some links to authority sites to complement its existing links. It's much more specific than that.

The idea being, to be an authority site, you need to link out to other sites.

There's another way to look at it:

Sites that are good resources GENERALLY have lots of links out to other quality sites. So in the good old days webmasters would just link to that one page with all the other good links on it (instead of linking out to the same 50 links).

I see LOTS of sites / pages that are links resources and haven't been updated since, I don't know, 2002 maybe, with tons of aged inbound links. Maybe before google became ubiquitous, people really thought these "quasi directories" were how people were going to find things on the web far into the future.

Nowadays, people just say, "Just google widgets and you'll find it," and they link to google search page instead.