Stoopid outbound link question guys. What is an outbound link. Is it a link to an external domain (xxx.com linking to yyy.com), or can it be also a inter-site link (xxx.com/default.htm to xxx.com/newpage.htm)? Is pr drained the same for both these types of links? Thanks.
Outbound links are external links on your site. Basically, their links which take you off your site (or domain) This is not to be confused with internal links whereby your just navigating your own site.
An outbound link is a link from your site going outbound to another site. For Example If you have link on your site to Yahoo.com. Then yoursite.com has an outbound link going to yahoo.com
a page can cast so much of a vote... each additional link means that all the other links get less of a vote as far as the PageRank algorithm would go, but some engines may also have algorithms which look for hubs and authorities and the like, and in those sort of algorithms relevant outbound links can help boost your relevancy
What's the point of looking for one-way links toward one's site, then? Any link exchange would do just about that. How about incoming links? Do they bring any PR, then?
There isn't any point in doing that. Yes. But incoming links bring PR whether or not you reciprocate them.
I like your view: it's so positve. No negative things, just nice ones. It's a kind of relief actually. Link exchange is much less stressful now.
I dont agree, i think PR does leaks, however you can control the amount of leakage to any external page through a good internal linking structure. If PR leakage concerns you avoid linking to external sites from your highest PR pages. When you exchange links with a site which will provide you a link from a page with less PR then your link page, you are losing some amount of PR to that site, but that loss is substantially less, since you gained in terms of the relevant anchor text(which is important). Put it this way, if your home page is PR7 for a 1,000 page site and your deep inside pages are PR3 you could link from hundreds of PR3 pages and not create a PR6 page. One link from the PR7 page could create a PR6 page. So which pages you link from is very important to the well being of your site. External links are good if you link to related sites since you add relevant anchor text to those pages and possibly put yourself in the right sort of neighbourhood (who you link to and who links to you is important), but it is at a PR cost, so don't pay more than you have to.
It is NOT at a PR cost to you. The more outgoing links on a page, the less PR each outgoing link gets, because the total PR available to pass on is shared among all the outgoing links on that page. But your page, the one containing the outgoing links, remains the same: IT DOES NOT LOSE ANY PR ITSELF. One more time: PR LEAK IS A MYTH. Stop worrying about it and worry about things that actually matter.
If you think you dont lose PR to an external link you are wrong, you will not get to know this fact by looking at the TOOLBAR PR, but the ACTUAL/REAL PR on which google determines SERPS is definitely affected.
*sigh* How many times do we have to around this block? I am well aware of the theoretical arguments that people use to justify this statement. The bottom line is that none of that matters. My repeated challenge has always been this: Show me one page, just a single page, that has suffered a loss in PR due to outgoing links. Just one. Anywhere. And you know what? There is never a reply. Because such a page doesn't exist. All the theoretical mumbo jumbo aside, PR BLEED / AKA PR LEAKAGE / AKA PR LEAK DOES NOT EXIST.
Minstrel... my motive is not to prove that you are wrong or that i am right, my motive is to learn and share correct knowledge with other fellow members of the group, so dont get offended, i am just trying to prove my point. Have you ever done any experiments to test this, i can say this coz i did this in past and do not have time to do such tests again and convince you, but may be you can test this on your own, place 1000 external links on one of your PR3/PR4 page and see the difference in the next update for your self.
I'm not personally offended but I am concerned about the fact that this BS gets propagated from one forum to another all over the net as if there is some basis for it. That's a ludicrous suggestion and I will do you the honor of assuming you know enough to be aware that it is. Show me a page with 1000 links on it and I'll show you a link farm. Google's own suggestion is that your pages should contain no more than 100 links. If you have proof/evidence, even from previous studies, produce it. Asking me to prove that it's a myth is like asking me to prove that alien abductions are a myth. It seems to me the onus is on those who claim it as fact to provide the evidence. I repeat: Show me a page that suffers due to outgoing links. Like everyone else who has made this claim, you know (and I know) that you can't do it. And THAT is the bottom line.
Google says a lot of things, but how many do u follow, they even say trying to increase your PR by link exchange etc. is wrong but people still do it, if we start working through google's suggestions then we might have to ban all threads on PR and link development in this forum. I had proof, but i did not know 1 year back that i will have to encounter a friend who wil need this proof again. Sorry minstrel.. the page on which i did my experiment 1 years back does not even exist now, i removed that page from my site, obviously coz i followed google's so called suggestion.... Now the onus is really on you to perform this test again, coz its you who is still not convinced.
Translation: There is no proof. There is no proof because the claim is bogus. If you really put up a page with 1000 outgoing links and you really believe that doing so proved anything at all about PR leakage, you have a lot to learn.
Translation: You do not want to accept a fact. I am so glad that i have a lot to learn, because a person who thinks he has nothing more to learn, never learnt anything.
A page has a PR score based on links to it, internal links from within the site and links from other sites. Lets say it has a score of 100 points. Regardless of how many links you add to the page, internal or external, the page's PR score *remains* at 100 points. The so called 'leakage' issue is one of how you manage PR within the site. If some of the 100 points that page has is from other pages within the site linking to it for navigational purposes... than it is the number of links on those other pages that can increase or decrease the 100 points... by increasing or decreasing the number of links on them (internal or external). These days, internal links don't carry the weight they may have in the past. So you shouldn't be worried about the points value behind every link in your site that leads back to your homepage with you keyword in the anchor text. It's the links from other sites, expecially those related to your own that will impact the position of your homepage in the search results for your keyword. Similarly, if you are hoping to rank your internal pages well, solely off the anchor text in the internal navigational links leading to them... you won't be anywhere near as successful as if you attract a link from another site to the internal page using that anchor text. The moral to the story is... forget it! Just keep adding content to your site and attracting links from other sites with content related to your own.