65 replies to this topic

[OldWelshGuy]

The way I have looked at outbound links affecting your ranking in the SERP's is like this.

Say you have two pages about say company formation, and one page has done everything right with regard SEO good focused pages of copy, navigation inbound links etc. but no outbound links from their best match page.

A second page however is not too far off the match with regard all the SEO stuff, but on their page they have some real good links that match up company formations like say The royal society of chartered accountants advice on choosing company software, Fiinancial times guide to setting up a company, the Law societies depoartment on the punishments for bad record keeping, Companies House rules and regulation of the duties of a company secretary etc.

As a user, which of those two pages would you rather be directed to?

We have always said here that if you do what is right for the user, eventually it iwll be right for the Search engines. I have certainly seen this to be the case and it appears to be getting more so of late.

[ghergich]

1 - So how do we go about finding these expert documents to ask to include links to our own related pages? Do we just look for sites linking to multiple urls on the related subject? I would like to make a nice tool to find expert documents, so i would like to define what to look for, so far my thoughts are closely related outbound links on a decently seoed site with unique content.
2. - Has anyone tested any of this. I very interested in the bit about linking to other quality related sites. My question is has anyone had a page that ranks say 100 in the engines then poped up 5 or so related outbound links and seen an increase in the rankings? Many people have resource or link pages but wouldnt that just help the resoure page rank better and to get a boost from linking out for you index page you would have to link out from it as well? Also if you have a nice resource page that is considered an expert document wouldnt it only help other sites as it would be considered affiliated to you and not counted (i know it help the user, but im talking about SE's)

[Grumpus]

1) No, I wouldn't recommend senting an automated agent out to someone's site and then hit them up for a link after they've seen you poking around in there by viewing their logs.

2) Yes - a links page (if everything it links to is about the same subject) will help to some extent in the same way that a link to your home page helps deeper pages. But, it only really helps pages that link to that links page AND is of the same topic as all the links on the links page. Not as much help as if it were on the same page, but it will flow through to other pages if the "line of relevancy" flows smoothly and directly between the pages.

G.

[Randy]

Ghergich: I've got a germ of an idea of how to create a tool get a better look at this kind of thing as well as some other stuff. Frankly, I don't have the time to develop it at this point in time, but it's on my Summer list.

Right now you can get a bit of a sense, but you have to do it all manually by using several search engines and several tools.

[ghergich]

well i was thinking at first of just looking up google rankings then looking at say the top 10 - 20 or whatever you type in. Then run backlinks command in say yahoo for those sites in the top whatever. I would have it look at the backlinks and find pages that linked out to several of the sites in the top of the rankings. This would maybe identify some expert pages but also show people who are proven to be willing to link out to good sources on the specific topic. The tool could spit out results with the pages it finds linking to multiple top ranking sites, listed first to the least - the cutoff would be 2 or maybe avariable, like you could enter in a number - so the website would never know i had looked them up with an automated tool - Prob have to use google api but thats fine

[Grumpus]

I really think you guys are overthinking this whole thing.

Do a search for something relevant to your page. Look through the first few sites in the results - if they are at the top of the results, they are doing something right.

Click on the link in Google that looks like it might bring you to a page that is relevant to what you are looking for more information about. Look at the page. Is it a good page? Is it competing with you directly? Does it appear to be doing anything underhanded? If everything looks cool with a cursory glance, then link to the page, for heaven's sake. If it's not an authority, your link will help it to become one some day.

When you're done adding the link, drop the webmaster a quick note and says "Hiya, just wanted to say Hello and that I found your site while looking for other sites that are along the same theme as mine. Your page about <whatever> was great - so much so that I put a link to it from my page at <location>. I think the pages compliment each other nicely. Have a great day. Dunno if my link will bring you a ton of traffic or not, but just wanted you to know it's there."

Don't ask for a link back - the webmaster will add one if they think it's appropriate. There's benefit to linking out without it being reciprocated anyway. It's different than reciprocal links, but it's still a plus in a good direction.

Believe it or not, all these new technologies are actually making SEO easier. Just do what's right and your site will rank. Period. If you're going to write programs, write things that track conversions and measure other data that is actually directly relevant to your efforts to make some money.

G.