How To Create OutBound Links For Your Websites?

Work on algorithm in the vintage computer lab

How To Create OutBound Links For Your Websites?

 

If controversy were an SEO strategy, everyone would be at the top of their SEO game. Unfortunately, it’s not. All controversy does is muddy the waters. And that’s exactly what the controversy over whether or not you should have outbound links on your site is good for-making life difficult.

 

 

The subject of outbound links has often been debated. There are some who worry about leaking PageRank-what (supposedly) happens when you link out to other sites. The fear behind leaking is two-fold: when you lead people away from your site they may not come back (hence your visi- tors “leak” away), and when you link out to other pages, you’re reducing the value of each “vote” because the value of an outbound link is divided by the total number of outbound links.

 

 

No one knows for sure exactly what mix of elements is considered when your page is ranked by a search engine. However, it’s safe to say that if you have only inbound links and no outbound links, it can’t look good for your site. And especially these days when social marketing is becoming more and more of a factor for search engine results. The best plan of action is to have a balanced mix of inbound and outbound links. Your site visitors will expect to see some links leading to other sites on the Web, whether those links are simple resources to help them find what they need or some- thing else.

 

 

Outbound links also help to establish your expertise in a particular area. Yes, inbound links help with that as well, but it’s not enough just to have people pointing to you. You should also have some favorites out there that you find helpful and that you think others will find helpful. When your visi- tors click through these links and find that you do know what they’re looking for, the loyalty points will be awarded to you.

 

This is how you build relationships with your visitors. And relationships are the ultimate reason to create a web site at all, part of making sure your web site appears in front of as many people as possible. As long as relationships are your main priority, all of the other elements of link building should fall right into place.

 

 

When you’re creating your outbound links, you should keep some guidelines in mind to appease search engine crawlers, because even though the main target for your links should be your site visitors, search engines will pay attention to your links and your search ranking could be affected by them.

 

 

■Keep your links relevant. That doesn’t mean that you can only link to pages that are in the same industry as your own, but if you do link outside your industry, make sure there is some logical reason for sending your visitors in that direction.

 

 

■Don’t overuse links. There’s nothing more frustrating for site users than to find that every other word in an article is linked. A good rule of thumb is no more than two or three links per article or blog post on your site. Other links, like ads for other services, can be added in addition to these text links, but again, keep them to a minimum.

 

 

■Use keyword anchor text as often as possible when creating your links. Using the phrase “click here” won’t gain you any leverage with a search engine crawler. Using a link that reads “gourmet ingredients,” when that phrase is one of your key phrases, will help improve your search engine ranking as long as the link leads to a page that truly is about gourmet ingredients.

 

 

■Be careful whom you link to. You may have heard the phrase “Don’t link to bad neigh- borhoods.” What it means is that you don’t want to link to low-quality sites, because some search engines will penalize you for that. For example, if you link to a spam site or a link farm, search engines are not going to look favorably on that link. If, however, you link to high-ranking sites, you’ll gain even more traction with search engines. Remember, though you may not be penalized for sites that link to you, the outbound links on your site are under your control.

 

 

■Don’t create pages that contain only links. This common practice from the early days of the Internet is no longer useful. Search engines see pages that contain nothing but links and read them as spam pages. If you must use a resources page, be sure to include descrip- tions of each link that you include on the page. Better yet, avoid this practice altogether if there’s any way you can.

 

 

■ Monitor links and update broken ones. A broken link is worse than not having a link at all. When you link to a page and don’t check back on the links periodically, things could change- companies go out of business, web sites change and disappear altogether. Then, when the search engine crawler follows the links on your page and finds a broken link, this reflects badly on your site. If the broken link is there for a long time, the search. engine could reduce your ranking because it appears that you’re not maintaining your site properly.

 

Outbound links aren’t the beginning and end of your search engine linking strategy, but there’s also no reason to avoid them completely. Use outbound links where these are relevant and useful to your site visitors and not one time more. And when you do use them, take the time to ensure that your links are accurate and connect to the page that you intend them to connect to.

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