The Role of Outbound Linking in the Overall Linking Strategy

Everyone in the world of search engine optimization is aware of the importance of Inbound Quality Links to on-site optimization but what about Outbound Links?

Outbound links include all hyperlinks on a webpage that point to a page on another website. While it's still not clear exactly how search engines deal with external links we believe that search engines assign a higher value to web pages that include links to authoritative websites. This makes sense because it indicates that you are more interested in giving high quality information to your readers rather than trying to hoard them and keep the readers exclusively on your website. To ensure that your site benefits from external linking it is important to follow certain guidelines.

• Point your visitors to useful information; this makes your site more valuable to the user. In fact, search engines often use these links to determine the topic of your website and to verify how relevant the information on your site is to that topic. For example if you are a Cosmetic dentist and your site links to websites like http://www.lviglobal.com/ and http://www.aacd.com/ as well as other important Dental and Dentistry - related websites, it will be clear to the search engines that you are a part of the Dental industry and that your site has some legitimacy.

• Link to quality and authoritative websites. Quality outbound links from your site can improve your search rank because these links indicate that your site is an "authority" on your particular topic.

• Some examples of beneficial outbound links are:
--Links to .Edu sites like Colleges and Universities that you have attended (Can be linked from the About or Bio pages on the site)

--Links to Non - Profit Organizations, Bar associations, Medical associations and so on. (Can be linked from bio pages or about pages)

--Links to authoritative .Gov sites like the FDA, CDC, NHTSA, and NTSB –(Can be linked from practice area and procedure pages)

--Links to Informative sites like Wikipedia, Medlineplus, Webmd, Abanet, GLIN - (Can be linked from specific medical or legal terms within the body of the content)

--Links to related research articles on other sites.

• Outbound Links To be avoided:
Avoid linking to unrelated sites and industries, as this will make it difficult
for search engines to determine exactly what area or theme your website
belongs to and may potentially hurt your ranking.
Avoid linking to competitor’s sites or Spammy sites.
Avoid Linking to sites that have a low PageRank.

In the end, the most important factor while working out a External Linking Strategy is your user. Place external links in a way that benefits your users by providing further information to them as they browse your site.

The best place for links is within the context of the page so that the flow of information is natural. If the linked content is significant enough, you may consider writing an article or creating a new page that covers that type of information. Update information regularly to maximize your search engine results as well as the overall user experience.

By following the guidelines above, you can gain the trust of both the search engines and the users and you can succeed in getting your site to be seen as an authoritative, quality site.