Too many outbound links?

Does the SE's penalize a page for having too many outbound links? Is there a threshold or number to stay under?

I'm not talking about a link farm. I have a reciprocal link page with almost 75 outbound links. I realize now I could have broken this down into multiple pages but if there is no penalty then I will leave the page as it is and any new links will go on a new page.

 

They say total links (internal or external) should not exceed 100 per page - while there is a good case for saying they count more than 100 links, as a rule of thumb other webmaster will see the link as loosing a lot of value if the page strength is divided between too many links.

I would hope your site has at least 50 pages if one page has more than 50 outbound links so as to conserve PageRank within the site.

Personally I strive for no more than 50 links on a page (internal or external) but will go up to 100 maximum (one a site with more than 75 pages).

As long as your site has lots of good content you are pretty safe.

 

You may find that even if the SE's will allow >=100 links, it would be easier to trade links with others (speaking to their desire to trade with you) having fewer links on the page. This would fit with your statement about breaking down to more pages. IMHO.

 

If you were a directory you would have hundreds if not thousands of outbound links and be an authority site. If you are not a directory, most likely, I would try to keep the number of inbound above the outbound count (just in case).

 

just in case of what, exactly?

you have to start somewhere. if outbound links are useful to your visitors, inbound links will come in time.

 

Good point Disgust.

 

This question has been asked and answered about 4 time in the last month on this forum. Why don't you do a little research, before asking the question?

Go and do a little research on the forum. If you can't find the answer come back here and I'll tell you the answer.

 

Great replies! Thanks.

 

I think the page in question is a "link", "resources", "partners", or whatever etc... Then the only consequence of having too many OBLs from there is that it will "bleed" or "leak" too much PR. This being the case, don't expect it to achieve high PR. Unless of course, if you ask your link partners to link to this particular page. Which is remote, since you would want them to link back to your home page

Right?

 

Not entirely right - no.

If a page had more internal links than external links, then you might be able to argue that adding more external links is going to bleed a noticeable amount of PR. But for a links/resources page with likely many more outgoing links than there are internal links, you pretty much have to count on losing the majority of the 85% of PR anyway.

For any page, 15% of PR is retained and 85% distributed across all links (internal as well as external). Because this is a recursive algorithm, internal links *usually* will bring some of the PR back to the page being analyzed. Once you let it escape through an external link it is gone for good (unless of course it is a reciprocal link - hehe).

So, if you have a page with 10 internal links + 60 external links ... adding another 20 external links doesn't affect the PR all that much. I think as stated above, the real reason to break it up is your link partners won't be as inclined to link to a resources page with tons of links.

I prefer this pagerank article: http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html to give a very clear insight into how page rank is theorized to work though noone knows the details for sure.

Also --- if you don't want to understand the forumla, but want some clear examples of what different linking structures will do, then read this article:
http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/index.html
browse about 1/3rd of the way down past the forumal and look at the examples --- very helpful to understand what's going on.

And when you're ready to embark on new link exchanges, please try my new service at http://www.seopark.com