SEO CheckList

This is the last half of a two-part discussion regarding links. This time, I’m discussing One of the most common advices I come across in many web master forums is to link to other web sites. In short, to include outbound links in web pages. One might not really understand it at face value. After all, aren’t inbound links the ones responsible for both traffic and PageRank? Still, outbound links have their uses even for SEO purposes.

First, we should debunk the myth. Many SEOs encourage the practice of outbound linking because they believe that linking to other sites using anchor texts you want to rank high for helps. Michael Gray of Graywolf’s SEO blog has conducted a study on the potency of outbound links. His aim was to create a hub for a certain niche. A hub is a web page which links to non-affiliated authority sites on a niche. According to the results, the web sites which used the anchor text “click here” instead of the relevant anchor text, ranked higher for the targeted keyword or key phrase. This factor is, of course, arguable. Others wouldn’t agree and think the same.

With regards to PageRank, Google advices to keep the outbound links in one page less than 100. More than that would drain the PageRank of your web page. Let me explain. When you link to a web site, Google gives it a score. The overall score for one page would be that particular page’s PageRank. The scores given for all the links on one page would be the number of links divided by PageRank. If you have 500 links in one page, it will drain your PageRank out.

Outbound links help when you want to create a hub. However, I believe the most important reason to link out is to encourage a link in return. There are some blogs which nobody links to because they’re their own little islands, linking out to nobody else. When other web masters or bloggers are alerted to your existence, you MIGHT get a link back in turn if your play your cards correctly.