Outbound Links And Search Engine Optimization

Somewhere along the line someone came up with the idea that outbound links i.e. links pointing out of your blog or website to another website, can significantly boost your search engine optimization. And like all SEO tips it caught on like wild fire. And a lot of webmasters and bloggers wrote articles on the types of sites you should be linking to in order to maximize this SEO boost.

And there was the suggestion that if your site links out to an authority site like Wikipedia, it will help your SEO.

Hmmm. Does not sound very credible to me.

Having outbound links can be beneficial, don't get me wrong. It's just that there is no evidence that doing this in itself has an inherent search engine optimization effect.

A couple of benefits of linking out include

Natural linking. We have said time and time again that Google looks for natural linking patterns in websites. And most websites will have links pointing in, and links pointing out. So yes for this purpose it makes sense to have some outbound links. And if you have to, then linking to authority sites like Wikipedia which has good content for your readers makes sense

Visitor trust. Your visitors are likely to keep coming back o you if the websites you recommend to them have quality content that helps them. It's the whole physiology behind the Google search engine. No reason not to apply it on your web pages.

Reciprocal link. Reciprocal linking is something that I really do not seek out simply because one way links have more SEO boost than a reciprocal link from the same page. But reciprocal links are better than none. There is the possibility of the webmaster of a page you link to lining back to you in their blog roll or another article. Does not happen often but from time to time blog owners will link back to a reference made to them on another site

So yes outbound links have there purpose on any niche marketing website or blog.

But the suggestion that outbound links give an SEO boost or advantage, to my mind needs a little more evidence