A surprising number of webmasters seem to think that outbound links hurt a page’s ranking and should be kept to a minimum, or not used at all. While it is true that linking to bad neighborhoods can certainly hurt the ranking of a page, it is equally true that linking to high-quality pages positively HELPS the search engine ranking of the page. The effect is particularly strong if the link points to a page that ranks very well for the key words in the anchor text of that link. This effect has been experimentally determined: if you are interested in the full research protocol and findings, here is the link: http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/search-engine-optimisation/number-links.shtml (I am not in any way affiliated with this website or experiment) I have performed my own experiments and can confirm that the effect is real, and quite noticeable. Outbound links to authority websites significantly boost the search engine performance of donor pages. In other words, you get a lot more search engine traffic if you link to other pages than if you don't, for the simple reason that you will be ranking higher in those search engines. A key aspect of this phenomenon is that the outbound links must point to websites that are relevant to your page. In other words, if your page of copy is about green widgets, the outbound links should point to websites that are related to green widgets. The obvious question now is: how can we use these outbound links for search engine optimisation without helping competitors and without hurting traffic? The answer is very simple: link to very authoritative but absolutely non-competitive websites, like Wikipedia. Also, put these links in the bottom half of the page, reserving the top half for whatever business you want to conduct. In this way you enjoy the considerable search engine benefit of the outbound links, without losing traffic. I have used this technique with great success to boost the ranking of all sorts of pages, and I wanted to make it clear to the neophytes out there that you have a lot to gain and absolutely nothing to lose by linking to high-quality websites in a strategic way. This has been a core strategy in my SEO copywriting efforts for quite some time.
This is true. I have been beta testing a new system that allows people to control the quality standards of inbound and outbound links to their sites, and people are seeing their SERP's rise in some cases almost purely from having quality outbound links and very very few inbound links.
I'm sure there is still balance issue here. Do you have to worry about having more inbound then outbound links?
In my opinion, no. Outbound links that point to relevant, high-quality websites can only help you in terms of search engine rankings. Inbound links are very important, but the ratio of outbound to inbound links does not appear to be an issue at all. The truth is that you need both, but for different reasons: the inbound links are a third-party editorial endorsement and therefore indicate independently-assessed trust; the outbound links indicate good faith and added value for users. Let us not forget that there is a specific reason for which Google's algorithm rewards pages that have high-quality outbound links: the reason is that a page of content that does not link to external websites is virtually guaranteed to be spam. Or, at the very least, a value-taker. Value-takers are simply not welcome on the Internet or anywhere else. You must offer value before you can get value. This is not a hippie concept - it really is how things work. I have rarely come across a useful article that did not have links to high-quality external websites. The folks at Google are well aware of this and have strongly woven the concept into their algorithm.
hmmm... very interesting point. I have never thought about doing outbound links, might give it a try, also which would be better, to have outbound links on the homepage, or on a links page?
Links should be contextual: in other words, they should be embedded within blocks of text. You write your articles as you normally would, and then pick words or groups of words in that article that can be used as anchor text for links pointing to pages that are relevant to those keywords. That's the correct way to use links. A good article should contain lots of links: most of them should point to other articles on your website, and two or three should point to high-quality external websites. Trust me, those outbound links are not going to lose you any traffic. If users want to leave your website, they will, regardless of whether you have outbound links or not. You get the search engine benefit without paying any price whatsoever. That's a win-win situation if I ever saw one.