Linking out: Often it’s just applying common sense

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Creating outbound links on your site, or “linking out”, is our topic for Day 3 of
Links Week. Linking out
happens naturally, and for most webmasters, it’s not something you have to worry about.
Nonetheless, in case you’re interested about an otherwise simple topic that’s fundamental to
the web, here’s the good, the bad, and answers to more advanced questions asked by our fellow
webmasters. First, let’s start with the good…

Relevant outbound links can help your visitors.

• Provide your readers in-depth information about similar topics
• Offer readers your unique commentary on existing resources

Thoughtful outbound links can help your credibility.

• Show that you’ve done your research and have expertise in the subject manner
• Make visitors want to come back for more analysis on future topics
• Build relationships with other domain experts (for example, sending visitors can get you on the
  radar of other successful bloggers and begin a business relationship)

When it comes to the less-than-ideal practices of linking out, there shouldn’t be too many
surprises, but we’ll go on record to avoid any confusion…

Unmonitored (especially user-generated) links and undisclosed paid advertising outbound links
can reduce your site’s credibility.

• Including too many links on one page confuses visitors (we usually encourage webmasters to
  not have much more than 100 links per page)
• Hurts your credibility, turns off savvy visitors and reduces your authority with search engines.
  If you accept payment for outbound links, it’s best to apply
  rel="nofollow"
  on them or otherwise ensure that they don’t pass PageRank for search engines. (As a user, I
  prefer to see disclosure to maintain my loyalty as well.)
• Allows comment spam, which provides little benefit for users. Also, from a search engine
  perspective, comment spam can connect your site with bad neighborhoods instead of legitimate
  resources. Webmasters often add the nofollow attribute
  (rel="nofollow") to links that are user generated, such as spammable blog comments,
  unless the comments are responsibly reviewed and thus vouched for. See Jason Morrison’s recent
  blog post about
  keeping comment spam off your site
  to prevent spam in the first place.

Answers to advanced questions about outbound links

When linking out, am I sending visitors away forever?! Hmmm… visitors may initially leave
your site to check out relevant information. But can you recall your behavior on sites that link
to good articles outside their domain? Personally, I always come back to sites I feel provide
commentary and additional resources. Sometimes I stay on the original site and just open up the
interesting link in a different tab. It’s likely that with relevant outbound links you’ll gain
repeat visitors, and you won’t lose them forever.

Yesterday’s post mentioned
that descriptive anchor text is helpful in internal links. Is it still important for outbound
links? Descriptive anchor text (the visible text in a hyperlink) helps accurately
inter-connect the web. It allows both users and Googlebot to better understand what they’re likely
to find when following a link to another page. So if it’s not too much trouble, try making anchor
text descriptive.

Should I worry about the sites I choose to link to? What if their PageRank may be lower than
mine? If you’re linking to content you believe your users will enjoy, then please don’t
worry about the site’s perceived PageRank. As a webmaster, the things to be wary of regarding
outbound links are listed above, such as losing credibility by linking to spammy sites. Otherwise,
consider outbound links as a common sense way to provide more value to your users, not a
complicated formula.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead