Can Outbound Links Boost Your SEO?
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We are always hearing about the importance of getting backlinks to your site and internal linking to get ranked in Google but what about outbound links?
As I was doing forum commenting for the Quick Start Challenge and the Turn $100 into $2000 Challenge I saw a lot of debate about outbound links or external links as some people prefer to call them.
An outbound link, if you don’t already know, is a url that you have on your site that links to another website. When you think about it the world wide web is formed from links from one site to another and enables it to be what it is. does
By linking out from your site, you are “voting” for the site you link to. That is the whole point of getting backlinks to your site.
When other sites link to your site you get a backlink from that site which is one of the factors that Google takes into account in it’s ranking algorithm.
But what if you link out to other sites?
Some bloggers worry that their search engine rankings will be damaged if they have outbound links. This only becomes a problem if you link to spammy, bad neighborhood sites or link farms. It clearly states on Google’s Webmaster blog that outbound links are a common sense way to provide more value to your users.
Others are concerned that they will encourage readers to leave their own site and not return. One way to avoid this is to have your link open in a new window which is easy enough to do in WordPress.
Visitors may initially leave your site to check out relevant information but if you are providing good information on your own site they will come back for it.
When you take a look at authority sites that rank well in the search engines they always link to external resources. Wikipedia, for example, includes citations and external links where appropriate.
Google ultimately wants its users to find what they are searching for, so when you link to other authoritative and relevant websites, you are providing a great service to Google’s users. This makes your website a more valuable resource, in Google’s eyes.
What are the benefits of outbound links?
1. Search engines reward this behavior
When you link out to other sites search engines see that your website is not a closed community. Google loves a lot of open community websites, such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, and many other social based websites.
Search engines can detect the outbound links coming from your website and could reward this behavior with a ranking increase.
Many believe that the more people that click on your links, the more beneficial it is for your SEO. Google can determine there is a lot of user activity happening on your website which is a positive thing in their eyes.
2. Linking out can incentivize some inbound links
When you are linking out to other websites, your outbound links can be detected by other people’s SEO tools. Most website owners are able to detect any incoming links to their websites by using some tools, including the Goggle Webmaster Tools.
In some cases, they are going to link back to your website. If this is the case, it’s likely that you will get some other additional backlinks from other people.
Getting links from this method is considered as the most natural way to earn links from other websites. By doing so, you are able to reach high ranking on the search engines.
3. Linking out strategy can get you traffic
There are a lot of bloggers, journalists, and any other people who are able to help you promote your websites, especially if they find your outbound links from your website.
By linking out to other people’s blogs or sites, you are going to enter the blogging community. As as result of participating and contributing to this community some may be very happy to help you promote your website.
By letting them know you have linked to their blog they may let their readers know and send you some traffic in return.
4. Create authoritative website
There are many studies showing that “linking out” method is very effective to improve the authority of your website. By doing so, you are going to send some authoritative signals to any search engines, including Google and Bing.
These search engines love to put the authoritative website on the first page of their search engine result pages.
Just make sure not to overdo linking out. It should form part of your overall SEO strategy but don’t link out for the sake of it. Only do external linking when it makes sense and is relevant to your post.
Do outbound links form part of your SEO strategy?
WordPress Lightbox Plugin For Videos Did The Trick
By · CommentsI just came across an excellent video on free traffic generation that Willie Crawford recorded and I thought it would be a good idea to share it on this blog but there was one problem. It would not fit!
I know that you can change the size of YouTube Videos easily enough to embed them on a WordPress blog but this one came from the LoyaltePays Library and is no way to alter the size.
Fortunately one of the other members came up with the ideal solution by using The WordPress Video lightbox plugin.
Well this a quick update as it has been quite a hectic week! I have had so much going on in my offline life that I have hardly had time to stop for breath. I really hate weeks like this!
We decided last year that now my husband is retired we would move house. Not only will we downsize but we plan to move closer to two of our children.
One day this week was spent looking at houses which suddenly came on the market and was 100 mile round trip. There is not much coming onto the market in the area we want to move to so they are snapped up when they do.
Another day just flew by baby-sitting for our daughter, and I had to do two more 95 round trips which took up half a day each.
On top of this we are blitzing the house to get it tidy enough for the Estate Agent to take pictures. The main living rooms are presentable enough but a couple of the bedrooms have turned into junk rooms and my office is badly in need of a declutter.
5 Internal Linking Tips For Your Blog SEO
By · CommentsAs I have been blog hopping to drive traffic to my blog as part of the 60 Day Challenge I have noticed that some bloggers to not take advantage of internal linking their blog pages.
Internal links are links that go from one page on your blog or website domain to a different page on the same blog or website domain and they play an important role in helping your site advance in the search engine rankings.
We hear so much about getting good quality backlinks from high pr sites that it’s easy to overlook the importance of internal linking.
Well it’s the end of the 5th week of the 60 day challenge.
It’s been quite a challenge this week as I have lost the best part of 2 days due to other commitments but I have continued to put in at least 60 minutes a day driving free traffic through forum posting and blog commenting.
I am finding it pretty mind numbing and keep thinking there has to be an easier way. It’s hard to keep going when you can’t see results but I know that this can take time.
Dean is in the process of changing his affiliate platform too so we can track the optins that we get when we send traffic to his squeeze page which will be a great help even though it’s going to take a couple of weeks more to set it up.
It’s been very frustating not knowing what optins we got from of a particular traffic generation method.
When that’s up and running we will also be able to choose from a number of landing pages to send the traffic which could help.
I can hardly believe that another week has flashed past. This time last week I was in sunny Spain getting ready to return home after a wonderful 4 week break although my husband tells me I spent too much time on the laptop.
The truth is that I enjoy the making money online business. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t. If I had the time I could spend hours at it!
It was quite a shock to the body to come back to the cold here after getting used to 20C+ sunny days in Spain.
Although I was unable to put in my minimum of 60 minutes a day trying to drive free traffic to my blog for two days last week I have been making up for it this week.
Turn $100 into $2000 Challenge Week 3 Results
By · CommentsI’m a bit late with this update for the third week of the about the Turn $100 into $2000 Challenge in 60 days.
I want to point out here that this is not the same challenge as the Quick Start Challenge . It seems from questions I have been getting some people are confusing the two.
If you have been following along you will know that I have been trying to do this Challenge while I was on a 4 week break in Spain and the end of the 3rd week coincided with us returning home.
Google Reader Alternatives – My 3 Top Picks
By · CommentsI’ve been using Google Reader for some years and was gob-smacked to discover that Google will discontinue this service in July. I have had a look at some Google Reader alternatives but have not yet decided on one.
As well as using the reader to follow my favorite blogs and interesting sites I get all my Google alerts delivered to it. I prefer this to having the alerts arrive into my email box so I am also looking for a reader that will let me continue with this.
I use the reader to keep track of the blogs that I have chosen for their rank and traffic so I can be one of the first to comment on a new post to help generate traffic to this blog for The Quick Start Challenge as well as the Turn £100 into $2000 Challenge .
I’ve looked at countless sites to get the lowdown on alternatives and there are plenty of them but here’s my shortlist:
Turn $100 into $2000 Challenge Week 2 Results
By · CommentsWell, it’s the end of week 2 of the Challenge. I can’t believe how the time has flown.
I am in Spain on a 4 week break and it’s quite a challenge in itself to spend the time doing this as well as everything else I want to do for my detox nichel. I was not expecting to be doing this challenge when we left so I am doing this on top of everything else.
CommentLuv Link Cleaner Plugin Fixes Broken Links In A Jiffy
By Sandy · Comments (9)Google scans your blog’s comment section and some users have removed the plugin for fear that the broken links could damage their ranking.
There is some controversy about that but broken links can affect your blog load time and Google takes that into account in it’s ranking algorithm.
A key part of SEO is making your site friendly to the spiders. If they can find their way around your site, they can index it, and then your site will get more page views.
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