Afraid to Link Out

By its nature, the Web is a series of interlinked sites. People originally found sites by following links long before search engines based their on data mining those same links. Webmasters created resources lists and link directories to help others, saving people time.

Relevant Rankings
By its nature, a search engine looks for sites that are helpful to its end user. If the engine is ranking sites that aren’t useful to people, its user base will shrink. It’s in a search engine’s best interest to find and rank the most useful sites first.

With that in mind, when a search engine discovers a page pointing users in the direction of more useful information, that page will be given more credit. Ask yourself what’s more useful: information that cites other government, education, and medical sites on particular disease, or a page of copy describing the disease without referencing any authority sites? Not even a citation. That answer is a no-brainer.

Benefits of Linking Out
Search engines and people don’t like dead end sites. Let’s explore the previous question from a link perspective. What type of page do you think has a greater chance of getting numerous links and bookmarks? A single page article that doesn’t cite sources, or a page that provide information, citations, and directs users to other sites!

First-rate bloggers and journalists have known the answer to this for years. Citing sources raises the bar on the content. Which would you trust more: journalist who cites sources and provides readers with more sources of information, or one who simply states things with the expectation you’ll believe them?

Search Engine Food
Search engines are always looking for new sites and pages. Give search engines what they want. Give them what they need. Make your sites useful and feed search engines high-quality links.

Linking Neighborhoods
You’ve taken great care to tell search engines that your site is about in terms of content and title tags. Yet, many forget that engines also look at what sites you link to. You’ve described your house, now you must also describe the neighborhood. Search engines can tell a lot by the company you keep! Establish your site in the right neighborhoods by linking out to authority and resource sites.

Posted by RedChilliSearch.com – Search Optimisation Services

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