I have received the following SEO advice: "The "Links" page is a crucial aspect of SEO. This page should contain links to other relevant websites, and perhaps even competitors. Once you have good quality, 3rd party websites linking back to yours, Search Engines will start to rank your site higher. This is very important and accounts for roughly 40% of web rankings. Google, in particular, encourages linking and rewards people who participate in expanding the online community through linking to other websites. People who do not have any external links are likely to be penalized for trying to hoard pagerank and not having the best intentions for users seeking the most relevant information available." I haven't got a links page. I would to hear from people with experience as to whether the statements above are correct and a page with outbound links is good for SEO. Thanks.
I think, this statement given above is true. But remember do not include too many links in the page. It would be considered as a link farm by google.
Links pages were actually useful 4-5 years ago when people didn't start massive automation in link exchanges. I still keep one of two links to relevant wikipedia pages or top reference sites on my new sites but remove them after a couple of months.
"Once you have good quality, 3rd party websites linking back to yours, Search Engines will start to rank your site higher." -well that much is true- but what does it have to do with a links page - do they think it's like a Twitter auto-following script - you link to them and they'll link to you? They won't, unless you specifically ask, and persuade them to. However, having some outbound linking to established sites in your niche is a good idea - makes your site look more 'rounded' - but it's a small factor.
I guess they could be useful but only if you exchange with relevant websites or from a page relevant to your website. most of the link pages i know contain many websites that are not related, in this case this wil not be good for you.
Well What you are saying to link back for getting link is RECIPROCAL CONCEPT So you should go for ONE WAY LINK only then google will rank you more better
Total BS... Whomever gave you said advice is likely a relic from the 1998-2002 days of SEO. Things have changed considerably since then. Google hates links/resources pages... You absolutely SHOULD link to other sites but NOT from a single page on your site. Having links pages makes it easy for Google to detect link exchanges which are a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Spend some time at the Google Webmaster Help Forums and see how often the top contributers and Googlers warn against having links pages. Instead of creating a links/resources page where you link to a lot of other (not necessarily related) sites, create contextual links to the other relevant sites where you are talking about a particular topic on which they are an authority. For example, if you have an article on your site about the Obama presidential campaign then link to Obama's official campaign website from within that article by hyperlinking the keyword phrase Obama's presidential campaign if it appears in some paragraph of the article... Don't simply add Obama to some Links/Resource page where you link to other sites that are not Obama campaign related. SEO at least at Google should be focused at the page level with incoming links to that page being from sites relevant to the topic of the page, content on the page relevant to the topic, AND outgoing links to pages/sites relevant to the topic. It is then that you get the most bank for the buck. If there is some bonus for linking out to other sites and you have a links page, then the boost in rankings would only help your links page not your site... Google and the other engines rank URLs... not sites... not even web pages... They rank URLs. End of story. There are some site level factors that count in the ranking algorithm like trust, authority, domain age... but search engines rank URLs. This is probably the most true statement in the text you provided. Google DOES encourage linking... but natural linking. Again, this is total BS... There is no such thing as a "you don't have external links" penalty or "hoarding page rank" penalty. Google will NEVER penalize a site for not having outbound links... What an idiot. It never ceases to amaze me the things supposed SEOs will say in order to get a client to use some antiquated technique. If you are getting services from this person for free, take whatever they say with a grain of salt and ALWAYS get a 2nd, 3rd,..., 20th opinion. If you are paying them even $1/hr, I would drop them like a hot potato.
Linking to relevant and authority sites does help your site gain the much worth Trust Rank. But there is no hard and fast rule that your site must have external links. I think its the inbound links that really helps your site move up the SERP of the major search engines specially Google as well as boost your Page Rank value. Thanks
External link won't help in anyway. Rather than you can go for getting inbound links from other website. The link page is not must.
I have a links page and it helps me exchange links with websites that bring quality traffic. I don't do it for SEO reasons. People need to just stop concentrating 100% on SEO and focus on branding your website and getting quality traffic to it in any way possible. Most major websites never focus on SEO to bring them the majority of their traffic, most is word of mouth and publicity.
Outbound links are good for your readers! If you supply your reader with useful information they will come back to you for more... So not SEO but for building respect from your readers!
PS: I wasn't saying link pages will get you penalized. But if your link pages are linking to irrelevant sites AND those irrelevant sites are linking back to you, that is a link exchange violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines... and if someone reports you via a spam report and Google manually reviews your site then it 'can' get you penalized. Link pages are okay if they link to relevant sites... But NOT an ideal way of linking out to other sites... It's far better to link out from within your content... content relevant to the page that you are linking to... not from some page full of links. Lots have links pages... Lots get away with it even when 2, 3, 4 way link exchanging... but lots also get penalized for them for the very reason I mentioned above...
Most websites online would have a hard time getting traffic from word of mouth and publicity, hence the importance of SEO.