Every Website Should Share the Link-Love with Relevant Outbound Linking

Earlier this week I was part of a conversation regarding the practice of outbound linking as it pertains to SEO. Conversation starter: Outbound linking is fine when you’re blogging, but any other website should limit or nofollow outbound links to try and maintain PageRank. My response: DOH! Blogs are websites, right? SEO rules apply to websites – PERIOD. Either way, there are many reasons (and arguments from respected SEOs) why outbound linking is a recommended strategy for all websites.

So, to be fair, folks who blog about blogging like to talk about outbound linking as a way to proactively grow your blog. This practice can help you to build a blog’s readership, build inbound links and in general – alert the power-bloggers of your existence. That being said, it’s no surprise that many individuals associate outbound linking directly with blogging. I just can’t help but consider the fact that blogs are just one piece of the Internet as a whole. Maintaining such a narrow focus can only be a detriment to the SEO success of countless other websites.

What about all of those ‘countless other websites?’ Some concerned with SEO maintain that linking out will leak PageRank and hurt their website’s ability to rank in the SERPs. On that point, I’ll revert to PeterD from SEOBook.com:

Some people fear that by linking out, there is less PageRank available to spread amongst your own internal pages. Whilst this may be the case, link hoarding is unlikely to win you many friends. Unless you’re running an established brand, or you buy all your links, you’re going to need friends to link to you in the first place.

What Are the Benefits of Outbound Linking?

• Outbound linking is like waving a big red flag to other websites announcing your existence. Maybe you aren’t a blog, but that shouldn’t keep you from linking to blogs! Find bloggers who write product reviews, niche industry commentary or are in a related field – link to them. But you can and should link to other non-blog websites, too.
• In the SEOBook.com article I referenced above, PeterD makes a great point: Use outbound linking to “temporarily extend your site.” If you are lacking in the content department, linking to resources on other sites can help to fill in the gaps for your users.
• Build credibility with your visitors. The Google Webmaster Central blog states that outbound linking can “Show that you’ve done your research and have expertise…”
• Beyond your visitors, there are also credibility factors with the search engines themselves. While there isn’t any concrete proof to this fact, respected voices in the industry speculate that how your site links to other sites creates a metric based on trust and value. Think “link neighborhoods.”
• Outbound linking incentivizes inbound links. Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz puts this nicely:

When you link out, it creates a signal to other websites and content creators that you’re a willing participant in the web’s natural linking environment and not a closed-off community or purely self-referential, pompous know-it-all.

What Are the Ground-Rules for Outbound Linking?

• Limit the number of links. Excessive outbound linking can not only confuse your visitors, but search engines are not likely to give a page with 100 or more links much attention. Not to mention, this is where the PageRank-leak-counter-argument may actually be true!
• Link to relevant websites. Outbound linking will only benefit your website and your visitors when the links are contextually relevant. If you link out from a page about bicycles to a website about cross-stitch, your visitors will cross you off as a flake – and Googlebot may soon after require a reboot. Again – think “link neighborhoods.” Link out to content relevant to your business, product, service, etc.
• Use keyword-rich anchor text whenever possible. Not only will this make you a A+ member of the Internet community, but it will show the sites you link to that you know what you’re doing (and therefore deserve their time and attention).

Please, don’t let you or your website become known as a “purely self-referential, pompous know-it-all!” Find a way to incorporate outbound linking into your SEO strategy. Share the link-love, and you’ll find that you’ll get love in return from fellow websites and search engines, too.