Neat Redesign

Nearly every web site owner considers whether he or she should link to external sites or not. There may be many reasons for doing or not doing so, but usually the lack of knowledge outweighs any unknown benefits and the decision is made not to outlink. Can there be something else added to the matter?

As the Internet consists (mostly) of content and links, creating content and links should be the most natural thing to do on a website. So why not link out to external websites?

Some web masters think that by linking out they let their PageRank pass on to the other pages. This is not entirely true. PR is determined by the amount of links, pointing at the page, and by other factors, such as the quality of incoming links. In turn, you can pass your vote to other pages by linking to them. The less links to point from a single page, the more value the recipient link receives. But you don’t actually lose PR.

Of course, another factor that determines the quality of a page (in the eyes of Google and - maybe - other search engines) is the quality of sites you link out to. From the perspective of the search engines, you vote for a site you link to. If you link to a site of high quality, all is fine. If you link to a site, involved in cheating website, you may be considered a “cheater” too, as you are considered the same quality of the site you link to. So linking to the so-called ‘bad neighourhood’ isn’t a wise move to do.

Another moment that external links influence is that they help the search engines determine the theme (topic) of your website. If you link to sites of your own industry, it becomes obvious that you belong to the industry. Especially if you mostly get incoming links from your own industry.

So, what should we fear linking to external sites? Yes. But should we link to any sites? No. What we should link to is sites the industry you are in, or to sites of related topics. The higher quality site you link to, the better.

Look at it like this: link to sites that you would like to show to your visitors to make their experience better. This guarantees you link only to the best sites. As the intent counts, the search engines will appreciate this move as well as your visitors.

To fasciliate the point further, here is an excellent article by Ammon Johns about the real meaning of links.

Update: Jim Boykin says “Yes” to external links too.

Another update: Simplenomics doesn’t worry about link leak as well.

So, do you link outwards or not?

Related posts:

• General Guide to CSS
• Website content and link building: one, another, or both?
• Which column layout do I need?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Design, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.