I would like to know whether outbound links to trusted websites like .edu, .gov benefits a site at all? Does it help a site or does it not make any difference?
This differs from person to person I have no factual evidence to support either claim People have said putting a link to a trusted site (one that ranks highly for your keyword) makes more of a "relationship" between you and the site, and will benefit your SERP's
Yes, it works I've done the following experiment on one of my site. let's say site is called site.com and the keyword "keyword" without good outbound links, site not in top 100 of google. i typed "keyword" in google, and put outbound links to 5 first results that were in the front page. site.com suddenly saw a jump in the top 10 of google! To make sure it was not an accident, i removed those links, after a few days, my site.com disappeared from the search results of the front page. pat.
Not sure if it will really help with the serps, but I do know that it helps your site to look a little more trust worthy since you are linking to quality resources and not just some random site out there. I think I'll give this theroy a try and see what happens.
I do it on some of my sites, often linking to edu pages with great relevance. I'm not so sure if it helps SERP's. But it can't look bad in the SE's eyes, they want people to find what there looking for, relevancy is the way to go, either inbound links or outbound.
This is some pretty circumstantial evidence, considering we don't know all of the other variables such as backlinks, site-age or competition. But I'll tell you my experience - My Experience I have a website that ranks on the first page for a certain term that is highly competitive. We have thousands of backlinks, lots of optimized anchor text, the whole gambit. Recently we went from number 9 to number 5 and the only RECENT change we have made is adding local news that links to local news sources (we did this for LSI optimizational purposes). After we added these links and news we saw a jump from 9 to 5, and given the competitive nature of the keyword, that's no small feat. Granted, we have been conducting some link building over the past few months, so it could also be the latent effect of the links we have been acquiring. My Opinion Linking to relevant sources helps in the same way that using varied versions of your keywords, or words relating to your keywords helps. It just gives your page a more refined theme. I don't think that out-linking is going to take you from number 100 to number 10 by any means, but i think it effects your ranking. Every penny counts.
Exactly! As a search engine, Google wants its users to get the information they are seeking. When other websites link to you, it means you have the relevant information. However when you link to quality websites (trusted sites in the eyes of Google) with relevant information, Google will consider your website to be more worthy because you are expanding the context of the user's search by pointing them to sites with more info relating to their search.
I have 7 pages of out going links. I'm going to clear up one page and concentrate that page with 20 high quality outgoing related edu, gov type links and see what happens. I'll even stick the top two competitors in there (snuggled between two other links so its not obvious and taking people off my site to theirs. Of course i'm doing a lot of other stuff so it's definately not a controlled test, but i'll give it a whirl.
when you link out to a relevant site (.edu or not), you are helping your visitors. you are doing them a favor. and in the long run, it can only help your off-page factors (which are much more important than on-page anyway).
Most of .edu, .gov site links benefit, but if they arent related with your site, you cant see benefits of them.