{"id":1309,"date":"2016-11-02T13:12:27","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T13:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/11\/02\/guide-to-google-ranking-factors-part-9-outbound-links\/"},"modified":"2019-05-24T07:50:52","modified_gmt":"2019-05-24T07:50:52","slug":"guide-to-google-ranking-factors-part-9-outbound-links","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/11\/02\/guide-to-google-ranking-factors-part-9-outbound-links\/","title":{"rendered":"Guide to Google ranking factors \u2013 Part 9: outbound links"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week we published the eighth instalment of our complete guide to Google ranking factors<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It concentrated on internal links<\/a>, as well as the best way to use anchor text and hub page or category optimisation.<\/p>\n

This week, outbound links<\/a>!<\/p>\n

1)<\/strong> An outbound link is a \u2018vote of confidence\u2019 to the site you\u2019re linking to, and you will be passing along some of your own site\u2019s ranking<\/a> power. However try to avoid using anchor text such as \u2018here\u2019 as this is worthless to you and the site you\u2019re linking to.<\/p>\n

2)<\/strong> Sticking to the website name is a safe bet when choosing anchor text, especially if it\u2019s \u2018example company conducted a study\u2019. That way usability and transparency is improved or maintained because visitors will know exactly what to expect when they click through.<\/p>\n

3)<\/strong> When linking to other sites, try to avoid terms that describe what they do, especially if it\u2019s something they\u2019re trying to rank for. As an example, if you link to a particular SEO agency with the phrase \u2018leading SEO experts\u2019. This can be considered manipulative and may incur a penalty for either party.<\/p>\n

4)<\/strong> Linking to authority sites: Reboot carried out a study<\/a> to prove whether or not the strength of a site\u2019s outgoing links has an effect on ranking.<\/p>\n

The good news is that yes it does.<\/p>\n

Reboot created 10 new websites each targeting the same keyword, only half of which included links to high authority sites. After five months it was concluded that, \u201cOutgoing relevant links to authoritative sites are considered in the algorithms and do have a positive impact on rankings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"reboot-study\"<\/p>\n

5)<\/strong> Outbound links do not dilute your site if they\u2019re towards high quality websites. And that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean the \u2018big publishers\u2019 any smaller blog can have authority if its key resource in its field of interest.<\/p>\n

6)<\/strong> According to the same research above, Pagerank retention is a myth. You may have heard the term link juice before, particularly in terms of having more internal links than external links for fear of leaking precious \u2018link juice\u2019 (or Pagerank) – but this seems to be untrue.<\/p>\n

7)<\/strong> Any link building scheme is considered black hat SEO<\/a> and will likely incur a penalty. So if you\u2019re regularly linking to a website that has little to do with your own niche and\/or those links have been bought or traded, you may get into trouble.<\/p>\n

8)<\/strong> Outbound links can be a trust signal. If you\u2019re linking to references in order to back up data or research, then obviously you\u2019re doing your job properly. People will trust you, search engines<\/a> will trust you. Well done.<\/p>\n

9)<\/strong> Broken links whether internal or external can be a sign of a poorly maintained site, so make sure you double-check your links before publishing.<\/p>\n

10)<\/strong> Affiliate links are fine, but make sure you use the nofollow meta tag<\/a> in accordance with Google<\/a> best practice.<\/p>\n

11)<\/strong> You should also use the nofollow meta tag when linking out from sponsored content, native advertising or if you\u2019re a blogger reviewing a product.<\/p>\n

For other chapters in our Google ranking factors series, check out:<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Part 10:<\/strong> backlinks<\/a>
\nPart 8:<\/strong> internal links<\/a>
\nPart 7:<\/strong> site-level signals<\/a>
\nPart 6:<\/strong> trust signals, authority and expertise<\/a>.
\nPart 5:<\/strong> duplicate content and syndication<\/a>.
\nPart 4:<\/strong> content freshness<\/a>.
\nPart 3:<\/strong> quality content<\/a>.
\nPart 2:<\/strong> keyword relevancy, frequency and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)<\/a>.
\nPart 1:<\/strong> on-page signals<\/a> such as title tags<\/a>, H1 tags and meta descriptions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week in our series of Google Ranking Factors: outbound links.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":1310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1124,306,660,50,147,1125],"content_type":[27095],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo","tag-affiliate-link","tag-external-links","tag-guide-to-google-ranking-factors","tag-link-building","tag-nofollow","tag-outbound-links","content_type-news"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"Christopher Ratcliff","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/ThinkstockPhotos-511302460-120x90.jpg","category":"SEO","timeago":"9y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}