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SEO 101 Linking to Other Sites
By Dwayne Goerges of www.topwebsitetips.com
Ever heard of the term “PR Draining “ or “PR Bleeding”? (Or one of the many versions of the terms). If you done any research on whether you should link out to other sites from your site you likely have. Perhaps this has left you with questions like: Should I ever link out to other sites? Does linking out hurt my site? Should I use the “Nofollow” attribute in my links to other sites? Should I ever link out to other sites? YES! In the reference below as well as in many other references from Google it has been stated that Google expects sites to link out to others. One statement by Google’s Matt Cutts states that “parts of our system encourage links to good sites.”. Why? Because if you are linking to another site without having been paid to do so, or having any other affiliation to the sites, than that must mean that the site had additional related information your readers would be interested in.
Properly done, outgoing links help Google and the other search engines know what your site is about. When you link from your site to another site Google expects that the link should be there to benefit the reader. Usually that would mean that the page you are linking to is related to the page you are linking from. Does linking out hurt my site? Done properly No. But if Google determines that the link was added because you were paid to add it your site could be penalized. Likewise, linking to unrelated or “Bad Neighborhood” sites could cause your site to be penalized. Only link to sites you are willing to recommend, because in reality that link is a recommendation for your viewer to go to the site you linked to. Should I use the “Nofollow” arrtibute in my links to other sites? The Nofollow attribute was created (by Google) to help you tell Google that you had no confidence in the site you are linking too. Later Google also asked that you use this attribute to let Google know that this is a paid link. This helps to keep your site from being associated with the site you are linking to.
If you are adding a link to a site because you feel the site is worthy of being linked to then by all means link to the site and leave the nofollow attribute off. Does linking to another site drain PR from my site? In a manner of speaking yes. Each page of your site has an amount of PR that it can pass to other pages (either onsite or offsite). Links on the page do not affect the linking pages strength, only it’s “voting” power which is split between all the links on the page. If you have 10 links on the page (let’s say they are all internal navigation) and Google has assigned this page a voting power of 100 (I just made up a number here to illustrate a point), Then all 10 links would each get a vote worth 10. If all these links were to internal pages of your site than that power would be retained in your site. But let’s say half of those links were to external sites. Now half of that voting power was passed to your internal pages and half to other sites. Therefore half of your pages’ ability to strengthen other pages was given to other sites. This might lead you to believe that not linking to any other site or “PR Hording” is a good idea. In reality though, unless you are heavily linking to other sites the small amount of voting power that is passed out to the other sites will have no detrimental effect on your site. But it will have the beneficial effect of helping Google know what is important on your site. Bottom line: Yes, link to other sites, but only link to sites that have information that supplements or compliments the information on the page you are linking out from. Link to the specific page that has this information (helping the link follower find what they are looking for), only link to pages on other sites that you are willing to recommend (your sites reputation is at stake here) and only use the nofollow attribute if you need to link to a site but are unwilling to stake your sites reputation on it.
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Contributor's Note
This is the sixth in a series of SEO 101 articles I am writing. I am a 10 year veteran of website building and promotion. These articles outline some of the basic steps I use to promote my clients websites.
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Google's Matt Cutts - page rank sculpting
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Wildnet Technologies
Review of Wildnet Technologies SEO work
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This intel was contributed by adac
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