SEO TIPS: Internal Links and Outbound Links

Have you ever heard that outbound links harm your website? If you have, you’re not alone. This is a myth that has been circulated for ages, but done properly outbound links do not harm your website at all. The wideheld belief has always been that it will make you bleed PageRank, but that really isn’t the case – at least if you know what you’re doing. Today, we go to outbound links 101 and learn all the basics of using these to out best advantage.

The myth has survived so long that many webmasters hesitate to link to other sites thinking that their page rank will be compromised and that their search ranking will drop. It’s a matter of this having been repeated so long and often that it has become accepted as truth without any investigation. We’re here to say this is not true.  Outbound links will not ruin your site.

You can link to other websites as long as those sites are relevant and useful to your website visitors. Mote the keywords, relevant and useful. Of course, don’t link to hundreds of others sites from the same page – if you have a resources page, however,  you can link to hundreds of sites from the same page and it will just be a links page. This all boils down to understanding what is and is not good and how to do things properly. As long as your outbound links are useful and relevant, Google will not penalize you.

With that said, some things concerning outbound linking have gone the way of the dinosaur. Reciprocal linking bit the dust a few years ago because of the fear that linking to other websites would dilute a website’s ranking. Google, however, does recommend outbound linking from websites as long as it is happening in a natural fashion. Again, the key is relevant and useful. The era of any old link is a good link is long gone.

One way to be resourceful is by providing your website users with relevant information that can be found outside your website. While linking to other websites, Google recommends that we keep the links to 100 links per page. Too many links on the same page can indicate that they are paid links. Link wisely!  A link building package is your best bet to get all the best links for your site and help you maintain your good reputation.