11 replies to this topic

[turbocashuk]

I am often asked to do reciprical linking and some of the sites would be useful for my traffic. Now if I put all those links on my links page, this page obviously wont rank so highly because of the outgoing links. What I want to know is whether it will affect the page rank and search engine placement of my home page?

[SearchRank]

It shouldn't because each page is looked at separately - at least by Google. A separate links page would have nothing to do with your home page unless you are linking to spammy link farms and then if you are and are caught, it could affect your entire site.

[BrianR]

We've had a somewhat similar discussion in another thread.

My opinion is that an inbound link should point to the page on your site that is most relevant to that link and its anchor text.

BrianR

[powerofeyes]

Hello turbo,
I can say your PAGERANK wont get affected in any way. And if you have too many links seperate them in couple of link pages or use some link management software on your site. Most search engines find difficult to follow more than 100 links per page,
VIJAY

[turbocashuk]

So now to boost one's page rank and ranking in google, surely you should get all links coming into you directed to 1 or 2 pages in your site, and all outgoing ones from your link page only. Then the home page will have lots of links coming in, but none going out so improving its page rank.

[awall19]

Also if your outbound links get to be a bit thick, consider splitting them up into a directory format. Weather or not the end goal is to provide resources to users, the links should be organized.

If you think outbound links hurt, think of how much pagerank the yahoo directory has (and it is nothing but links!)

Linking to complete garbage will hurt you, but otherwise linking is fine. As a rule I do not think external links on the home page is a well thought out plan. Anywhere else is fair game.

[Jill]

So now to boost one's page rank and ranking in google, surely you should get all links coming into you directed to 1 or 2 pages in your site, and all outgoing ones from your link page only. Then the home page will have lots of links coming in, but none going out so improving its page rank.

Nope.

It's fine and dandy to have links pointing to any page of your site, and it's also fine to have links out from any page.

You are under the misconception that links going out hurts your PageRank. It doesn't.

Jill

[jerry]

Jill,

Would it be fair to say that links on the HOME page could hurt your ranking in an indirect way?

For example: If you had 100 outgoing links on your home page, wouldn't this decrease the amount of PageRank your home page would have available to pass on to your OWN pages? And then if your other pages have a lower PageRank, they would in turn have less PageRank to pass back to your Home page.

So even though Google won't directly decrease your PageRank for having outgoing links, it looks to me like your PageRank would decrease never-the-less with outgoing links.

Jerry

[Jill]

Why would anyone have 100 outgoing links on their home page? If they did, they would be considered a type of hub, or directory, or whatever it's called, and they would be treated accordingly.

If it made sense for the page to link out to 100 other sites, then that's what they should do.

[jerry]

Jill,

I was just using the 100 links on the Home page as a far-out example to make my point clearer.

My understanding is that all outgoing links decrease the value of PageRank a page has to pass on to it's own pages and therefore outgoing links do indirectly decrease the PageRank of the page in the long run. Am I missing the point?

Of course, I'm not saying to not have outgoing links. They are necessary to have a useful and informative site.

Jerry

[Jill]

The links out do not decrease your own pages pagerank. I've heard people from Google in person say this many times.

Jill

[Scottie]

But you are dividing that page's "vote" among all the pages you link to, even though you are not reducing the PR of that page.

We seem to be obsessing about PR again... why would you link to outside pages from your homepage? If it makes good business sense to do so, then do it.