Web Design Ireland

Outgoing links are your friend. Hug them. Use them lots. The faithful hyperlink is the building block of the web - without them - it simply wouldn’t function. So why are businesses so scared of giving someone a link?

Well typically, business dont want to give away too many links because it is an endorsement, similar to an offline recommendation, and this could be problematic if the website in question changes to the point where it is damaging to the website that a visitor came from. Another reason is that in days gone by the more incoming links with the fewer outgoing links you had the greater your pagerank, without pagerank leak. There is also the fear that if you provide too many outgoing links that visitors will leave your website without buying too easily.

Here’s the bigger picture..

Be sensible with the pages you choose to link to. Make sure they are on topic, relevant to your audience, and trustworthy. If you are a frequent visitor to the page you link to and like, chances are that it will be a good candidate to link to.

Visitors will thank you for guiding you through the web on a pleasant path, and actually value your website more if you provide interesting links for them to follow.

Never popup a link in a new window, allow the visitor to control their path - rightclicking to open in a new window if they so desire. From a search engine perspective, outgoing links are a sign of a website that has knowledge in the field, and is an authority on a topic. Therefore they should be encouraged - not denounced!

Tips to remember

Use your link text wisely. If you are going to link, dont use click here as your link text. Search engines use link text as a way to determine what the resulting page might contain, and therefore rank that page higher for specific phrases contained inside the link text. Outgoing links attract visitors as well - some blogging software allows pingbacks, which automatically gives you a reciprocal link.

Think of a pingback as a post on a blog which alerts the owner (and other visitors) of the blog to the fact that someone has mentioned the blog article. Links = traffic, therefore the more pingbacks you receive the better. Worry about your content, and your visitors, and pagerank will come as a result. Outgoing links also show in referral logs, so they may help your website get noticed by influencial people, who in turn may start to help you out, by linking back to you.

Richard has a good few tips on ongoing links and how they may potentially hurt your ranking, there’s alot of common sense advice over there to follow.

Reciprocal links still work to a degree - I definitely wouldn’t spend my time sending emails looking for reciprocal links. If they happen by accident well and good - otherwise move on, and spend that time writing quality content.