Should you really be linking out?
There is a perception out there that linking out to high authority sites is a good website optimization strategy and will help your website perform better in the search engine rankings. Perhaps you’ve seen it where a website, down in the footer, will link to higher authority websites such as CNN or google.com. The SEOer or webmaster does this because they think it somehow increases their ranking.
Here at Melbourne SEO Services, we believe people are over exaggerating its effects. That is to say, in our testing, we haven’t seen it significantly affect rankings.
I think this myth may have arisen out of something Matt Cutts, from Google, talked about. He was asked the question, should you encourage people to post on your blog since you’ll potentially send links to other websites?
He suggested not to close comments in an attempt to hoard page rank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites, part of their system encourages linking to good sites. From this we understand that it’s a part of the algorithm, but we feel it’s only a very small part.
I think people may have taken this a little too literally and thought that Google will look at you more favorably if you link to “good sites”. As I said, we have done our testing and we couldn’t find any isolated examples where sites were ranked more favorably as a result.
If that’s the case, should you link out or not?
You don’t have to turn off comments or do smart linking tactics, like hiding links in JavaScript to try and hoard the page rank. This looks unnatural. The whole aim of the game in SEO is to replicate what happens in nature, and it’s not natural to have your website never linking to anything anywhere.
So, it’s ok to share but don’t link out expecting it’ll move you to #1.
Here at Melbourne SEO Services, our SEO specialists know what works when it comes to link building and on page optimization. Get an SEO quote today and find out the big difference SEO can make in your business.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Useful Information about Website Optimization. looking forward more seo tips articles..
It’s not just about footer links linking out to ‘good sites’. In my opinion, footer links don’t weigh much in the overall SEO of your site. The best links would still be within the body of your web content, not on the edges of your site.
@Benson – At the end of the day, a link is a link, whether or not it is in the body, footer, header, and so on. Although more clicks are going to be made to the links that are within the body of a post, the way that PageRank is calculated is much the same as a sieve with water straining through it. Each link will receive the same PR value either passed on or discarded depending on whether those links are followed or nofollowed.
Personally though, I rarely use footer links for linking out to other websites, I will use them for internal linking only.
When I write content for my blogs, I only link to these big, great sites if it really makes sense to link to them (for additional insight and information) but I also link to my other related articles.
I just want to strike a balance of getting more pageviews on my other posts as well as appear credible in citing sources of information as needed.
@Ryan – Is it all really the same? I’ve been bombarded for the longest time by link advertisements that offer links on the footer or sidebar. They say these links are better than links in the post body because you get PR juice from the homepage and not the post page which carries a lower PR. I’m not too sure now what this all means.
I just find it weird at times when I see a site that links only to their inner pages, even if they can cite other credible sources outside their own yard. Seems not a natural thing to see, especially if you are considered as an authority in your niche.