Outlinks Give Back to Your Blog

Why do people avoid linking to other sites? This goes for writers, marketers and webmasters alike. Do you fear losing a reader to the other site for good? Surely, your writing is better than that? Do you think you are giving away your Google Page Rank? Or is it just laziness?

Whenever I read articles by third parties, I am amazed at that writers miss out on the most obvious links they could have included in their articles. It gets outright weird when publishing sites expressly forbid outbound linking. Don't they consider that outbound links make articles more interesting? And readers would enjoy following up on a theme in that easy manner. If that is not reason enough, it will improve your Google Page Rank. Because, yes, outbound links can improve your article's ranking. 

Some believe that outbound links will add little if nothing to the ranking of a page. Contrariwise, they believe that those links are inserted at the expense of inbound links and damage your own Google Page Rank. The arguments run along two lines: on one hand, that outbound links drain your Google Page Rank (by somehow metaphysically transferring it to other pages, I suppose); and on the other hand, that the massive reciprocity of all those sites you linked to will result in enough inbound links to cause Google to think you're using magical black hat techniques to get them. 

Neither of these arguments holds water. 

First, outbound links do not somehow and inexplicably cancel out the good inbound links do for your articles' page rank. Let’s suppose that the Google Page Rank of a page is valued at 4 (out of 10) and you are writing an article for that site containing external links. This will neither affect nor actually harm that page's rank. It might help the page rank of another site you link to, but it is not at the expense of the linking site.

Look at it this way. Your article has a tank full of water; full always means that at the top there is air. The water and the air together are your article's page rank. In weight, the air is near to nothing compared to the water. When you place an outbound link, a little bit of the air goes out. The air is split between all the outgoing links while the water never moves. The air can't go in the negative, and the water weighs down your Google Page Rank. On the other hand, the inbound links also bring in air but no water. As in an ecosystem, the exchange of air is not important in its mass or lack of it, it is important to make the surroundings aware of the existence of your article. The same logic applies to internal links, too.

Second, the argument that if you have outbound links will result in a flood of reciprocal links is hardly credible. Just because you link to an article on Wikipedia won't get you a back link. If you link to relevant articles, you will be luck to get a back link. And if you're linking to good, non-spam, non-link-farm sites, reciprocal inbound links will not harm your page rank, quite contrariwise in fact. The incoming karma is just as marginal as the one you give out, but all those bits and pieces will add up over time. 

Make sure your outbound links don't cause you problems. Choose links that are relevant to the content of your article. Keep links as a short list at the end of the article. Spreading them throughout the body of the article is irritating for readers. It is no real help when they want to follow up other sources, too. Don't build an interminable list full of outbound links. Such lists are not well received by Google. I usually limit my links to three, at the most four, at the end of the article. If I have a really relevant one that fits the text in the article, I will add one or two there.

If your article has useful content and is of high-quality then relevant outbound links will help you attaining a better page rank for it. While it may seem counterintuitive to be giving other sites extra exposure, the truth is that you will profit from wisely chosen links.

A relevant link might be a page or an article you used when researching and writing your article; it might be an article that holds another opinion than you do; and it could be your own articles that link up with the theme. And with your article collection growing, linking your own articles becomes more and more relevant in more sense than one. Make the most of it!

Further reading

Google Search Dominance
Google Translate Trap
Online Reputation