Outbound links and their benefits?

[wonderpunter]

So what do you guy's think? Some people think it reduces their own ranking, Some are pro outbound.. I personally tend to stick them on articles but not the money pages.. I am going to do a test with some of my money pages and see if there is any difference.

[MMM]

Been trying to test it as well on some posts. Haven't noticed anything specific so far. I assume that in any case the effect is minor, either side, and with so many parameters involved, its hard to notice the difference.

[tipstertables]

Depends on the page I guess. On a bookmaker review/ free bets page it wouldn't seem to make much sense (excluding affiliate links of course).

I think in an article, if the page you link to adds extra value/ insight regarding your own article it's good. I've heard arguments that adding outbound links to relevant authority sites can add extra relevancy/ context to your own article in googles eyes.

But on the flip side, you don't really want to pass link juice out to other pages competing with you for the same keywords. Luckily 'nofollow' is always an option!

[chris_rp]

I can tell you that the internet marketing firm I worked for, the main SEO thought it was dumb.

Personally, my intuition, without any testing or case studies, would be that external links to authority sites is natural and it's sort of riding the wave. I would expect you get a little bit of favour from being associated. Or if nothing else I'd expect it to add some real value to the visitor. The question is sort of like asking how long a piece of a string is though. My inclination on corner stone articles (ie big information-packed pages) would be to throw a couple in (but not to direct competitors). Reviews like mentioned above doesn't make half as much sense.

Something I read the other day said that linking to your site and an authority site from a 3rd party website (say a web 2.0 property) is good practice. For example, something like "for more information on XXX visit YYYY and YYYY" (obviously a bit more than that but you get the idea). The thinking being that if people see your link alongside a link to the authority in your niche, it's a good look in the eyes of Google. Anyone here looked at that? It again sounds a little counter-intuitive in the sense you're helping a competitor but then if you're just getting your own rankings I suppose it could help more than hinder you...

[DanHorvat]

Page & Brin have formal education, even if it is from Stanford. But they know citations are very important in the academic community, as that's basically the first thing you learn.

So I'm sure outgoing links to authority sites add some relevance to your own page, as it's considered a citation of sorts. Which in turn increases the quality, relevance and trustworthiness of the page.

That's just my opinion. I don't have proof.

[tipstertables]

Something I read the other day said that linking to your site and an authority site from a 3rd party website (say a web 2.0 property) is good practice. For example, something like "for more information on XXX visit YYYY and YYYY" (obviously a bit more than that but you get the idea). The thinking being that if people see your link alongside a link to the authority in your niche, it's a good look in the eyes of Google. Anyone here looked at that? It again sounds a little counter-intuitive in the sense you're helping a competitor but then if you're just getting your own rankings I suppose it could help more than hinder you...

Yeah I think this is quite a common, somewhat grey hat SEO practice in a lot of niches.

The idea is to create a set of web 2.0s filled with content relevant to your own site and point one or two links per property to pages on your own site among other links to authority sites (e.g. News sites).

If you make enough of them they can have an effect on their own, but their real power lies in their ability to withstand being hit with a lot of lower quality/ spammier links due to the high DA of the host sites (wordpress, blogger etc).

They essentially provide a barrier between hundreds/ thousands of spammier links and your site, while passing on most of the link juice from those links to your site.

Search for tiered link building for a more thorough explanation.

[golfbettingsystem]

I guess with stuff like this if it's natural and enhances the reader's experience which, in turn, allows them to supplement the information on your site with additional relevant info that they're looking for, then it should be at least neutral if not marginally positive. Sure there was a session on Barcelona last year that touched on this area, I'll try to find the slides but it makes logical sense.

Personally I link contextually to sites of relevance (i.e. in a golf preview to weather forecasts, tee times, past leaderboards etc) and these links aren't nofollowed unlike any affiliate links. The only thing (rightly or wrongly) I tend to do nowadays with these links is to link via a 'click here' or URL rather than an anchor text to avoid any grief/removal requests further down the line. Can't say I can quantify any SERPs upside from any of this mind you.

[Kazino]

IMHO, no need to use target for donor keywords in anchors of outbound links. Otherwise the relevance of the donor relative these keywords will be reduces.

[JackTenSuited]

IMHO, no need to use target for donor keywords in anchors of outbound links. Otherwise the relevance of the donor relative these keywords will be reduces.

what?

[Kazino]

what?

For example, I have a page about Microgaming Casinos.
If on this page I will use an outbound link <a href="ExternalPage">Microgaming Casinos</a> then relevance of my page relative keyword "Microgaming Casinos" will decrease. Because this link means that I think the ExternalPage is more authoritative than my page relative the keyword "Microgaming Casinos".

I'm feeling it.
I never read about it.
But I also never read about any experiments with proof that it is not correct.

[John Anthony]

Answer or outbound links are important is very simple. It should place outbound links in your articles, but it is very important to linked websites are valuable and give added value to the user. What are the side valuable? Example: When you write about sports betting can insert a link to a wikipedia with an expanded definition of betting - hxxps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_betting - Is that the link is the value for the user? Of course! Is such a link has a negative impact on our website? Of course not! On the contrary, in the eyes of google is ok, we link to serious website, diversify additional content on our site. Google strives to naturalness, linking to external sites is as natural as possible, but we need to know in order not to overdo it and to link only "strong" web page.
*Sorry for my english, I hope that everything is understood