Who’s afraid of outbound links?

August 2, 2010 By 36 Comments

(Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes)

We all know the importance of inbound links (aka backlinks) but what about outbound links? First, let’s start with what an outbound link is. All we’re talking about here is a link that goes from your blog to another site.

Yes, an external link. Oooooh…scary stuff.

Here’s three common reasons why bloggers don’t like to have outbound links:

  1. Outbound links take people away from their site.

    That’s kind of a bummer if you think about. You do a lot of work to get people to come to your site, then send them away!

  2. The more outbound links there are, the less link juice other outbound links get.

    This is a consequence of how Google’s page rank algorithm works.

  3. Outbound links don’t help SEO.

    It’s often better for SEO to have internal links.

Those are actually very valid reasons. But that’s an extremist’s point of view. As long as you can find a middle ground, outbound links can actually help your blog grow. Let’s revisit the aforementioned concerns and demystify them a bit.

Outbound links take people away from their site

That’s absolutely true but if your goal is to provide real value on your site, wouldn’t it make sense to point your visitors to another expert when it makes sense to do so?

At the end of the day, you can still be the authority on your topic but I’m sure there are many opportunities where there are valuable resources related to your post that you could link to.

Besides, people are savvier than ever these days and you won’t be able to hold your visitors hostage anyway. You might as well provide them with a level of convenience that keeps them happy and coming back.

Finally, providing authoritative outbound links helps establish you as an “authority blogger.”

Increasing outbound links decreases link juice

OK, there’s this thing called Google PageRank that we have to worry about. Basically, if your site has say, a Google PageRank 6, you get a certain amount of link juice, which gets divided evenly amongst all your outbound links.

The more outbound links there are, the less link juice other outbound links their site get.

First of all, how many bloggers even have more than a PageRank 2? Here’s the deal, if you link to real sites with real useful information, you’re doing what’s best for your site. You can’t worry about how much link juice each one is getting. If you are PageRank 0, no one is getting anything anyway. And if you really are PageRank 6, not only will people still like you, they will likely also pay you to get their link on your site. See? No one gets upset at all!

Outbound links don’t help their SEO

You can make a case that outbound links do help SEO. By having outbound links to sites with content that is related to yours, Google looks at you as a potential peer in that network. The more appropriate links you have, the more valuable Google sees you in that arena.

Moreover, indirectly, these links should create some reciprocal links as well.

That means when you link to others, there’s a chance that they link back. Reciprocal links are often a good thing; inbound links are almost always a good thing.

Gabe Young Gabe Young is a business professional with an entrepreneurial spirit. Gabe has an MBA and managed IT departments in the Fortune 500, creating strategies and tactics for some of the most popular websites. Visit Gabe at Free Blog Help dot Com.
Filed Under: Getting Started Tagged With: , , , ,

SEO Anchor Text SEO Anchor Text SEO Anchor Text SEO Anchor Text

June 15, 2010 By 22 Comments

(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)

Do I have your attention?

Good.

I’ve mentioned this before, anchor text matters.

If linking is the door to higher search results, anchor text is the key that unlocks that door.

I know this for several reasons. I rank pretty well for a couple of long tail terms. I also watch as many of those free SEO videos as I can from people like Brad Callen, Andy Jenkins and the like. You know, the Stompernet guys and big time internet marketers. They give away a lot of good stuff for free. And if they’re a-givin’ I’m a-takin’.

Using anchor text naturally, such that it doesn’t break the flow of your prose (and sound all weird) is a bit of an art.

But first you have to get the anchor text (if you are linking), or find a way to provide it people who want to link.

1. Ask for anchor text

If you aren’t sure what anchor text to use when linking to an article, ask the article’s author.

If you’re an author, provide anchor text information to people who want to link to you.

If you find yourself being linked to with unsuitable anchor text, here’s what Erica Douglass does:

I send them an email thanking them for linking to my blog, and then say “Instead of erica.biz as your link text, can you put ‘starting your own business‘?” (I’ll also often throw in an entire sentence with the <a href=""></a> etc. already in there.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve gotten most of my good rankings from guest posting and putting the SEO’d text in my blurb. I show how to do this in Guest Post Secrets.

2. Using SEO keyword metadata

STOP.

I’m not going to write what you think I’m going to write about keywords. Instead, I’m going to make an offer. First:

Use your meta keywords to specify your preferred anchor text.

That way, when I want to link to you, I’ll know what you want to rank for. I just look at the source for your page, extract what I need. Easy.

Here’s the offer: if you want to link to one of my articles, and you find that it (the article) has no keyword metadata (there are plenty, too many), email me, I’ll add keywords you can use for anchor text, and send you a free copy of Blog Post Engineering when I get the trackback from your link.

3. Let’s plug it in

If the notion of specifying keyword metadata is simply too repellent, I offer a tiny plugin for your amusement.

Since it’s Tuesday, we can go technical.

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/*
 * Plugin name: Fast Anchor Text
 * Plugin URI: http://website-in-a-weekend.net/seo-anchor-text
 * Description: Set desired anchor text as custom field.
 * Version: 0.1
 * Author: Dave Doolin
 * Author URI: http://website-in-a-weekend.net/
 */
 
function anchor_text_meta() {
 
   if (is_home()) return;
 
   global $post;
   $anchor = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'anchortext', true);   
   if ($anchor) {
      echo "<meta name=\"anchortext\" content=\"$anchor\" />\n";  
   }
}
add_action('wp_head', 'anchor_text_meta');
?>

If you don’t like plugins, and you prefer messing around with functions.php (or custom_functions.php in Thesis theme), you can just paste the functional parts into those files.

Here’s a screenshot of how to use it:

Custom anchor text

Key in blue box, anchor text in red box

Here’s the plugin file: anchor.zip.

Blog Maintenance Challenge

Believe it or not, I am slowly yet surely adding material to the Blog Maintenance Challenge. Dealing with keywords and anchors is definitely on the curriculum.

I’ll have some videos over there too.

Filed Under: Extending WordPress Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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