Outbound links
-
We are working with a large, global customer that has asked us to link to their website from about 5,000 pages of our website. The links would either point to one page on their website, or they would point to specific pages throughout their website.
Is this a bad thing from an SEO perspective, as in - would either of us be penalized from search engines for doing this?
-
Both great answers - thank you Sean and Brighton College.
This just confirms my suspicion that it's not a good idea. You know that sickening feeling you get in your stomach when something doesn't feel right? That's the feeling I got when approached from our customer about doing this. I think that gut instinct as Sean alludes to has a lot of truth in SEO.
I agree with both of you on "it's better to have a few good outbound links" and "the more inbound quality links vs outbound, the better."
Thank you!
-
If it is a Wordpress site (or something similar) with a link in the "blogroll" for example, I don't think either would be in deep trouble, but it might decrease your rankings. TIn the situation I described, it is acommon practice and is natural. However, it wouldn't help them too much as all the links come from one site. I would not recommend it though, you do not want a high number of outbound links. Google might think its a directory or something similar and decrease your rankings. Ideally you want a higher number of inbound links than outbound links.
Hope that helps
-
It is not a good idea to link to one page or one site from every page of your site, these 5,000 links will not give them much if any benefit and it may harm them.
If you are in related industries they would probably be better off getting a few links from you from a few pages that are best suited to be linking to pages on their site.
Linking to another site should only be done if you can justify it by asking yourself if your visitors would be interested in the content of the page you are linking to.
I hope this helps
Sean
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What are your link-building strategies?
Link-building seems to be the biggest SEO item that still remains foggy to me. I was wondering what this community's thoughts and strategies are around in for your own personal projects. I think if I can hear some real life success stories, it might make more sense to me in the long run. Anything, good or bad, is welcome!
Link Building | | rachaelpracht1 -
Spammy links
Hi I was reviewing a clients link profile and found a lot of the links they have pointed at their domain have the anchor text "Buy Viagra" or "buy viagra online" and similar. Now the website has absolutely nothing to do with this kind of business so no doubt these links are spammy. To my knowledge the website has not been penalised by Google so far. Is it best to disavow or just leave alone? Kind Regards
Link Building | | TheZenAgency0 -
33k links from Yahoo?
Google WMT says I have over 33,000 backlinks from Yahoo.net, linking to 4 different pages on my site. I am not sure if these are nofollow or not, but I would assume they are. It also says I have almost 4,000 links from feedblitz. Should I be concerned or do something about either of these two things? I am pretty unfamiliar with RSS feeds.
Link Building | | redfishking0 -
No inbound links ?
Hello I just got SeoMoz, started the whole thing and compared myself to my competitor. I'm writing for mayor national newspapers in latin america, been featured a few major sites, and got a whole lot of links directing to muy site. I recently moved domains about a month ago from rxmagaizne.mx to rxmagazine.co. Is this the reason i'm not seeing any links ? ibIPY.png
Link Building | | timi-do0 -
Sidebar Links
If I have x number of posts with sidebar having popular posts. Will each post acts as a link to popular posts? or will be penalized for site wide links? Thanks, Venkee
Link Building | | Venkee0 -
Why does my website have 2,000+ links, but only 16 linking root domains?
Why does my website have 2,000+ links, but only 16 linking root domains?
Link Building | | thestudio40 -
Link value
Hi I have some links from blogs to our ecom website. My question is if anyone knows what happens if you have several different blogs on .blogspot linking in to you. Does that make them loose value because they are on the same domain? I can probably quite easily have 5-10 blogs on blogspot all with PA of 35-40 link in to us. Is it worth striving for or should i strive to get blogs that have their own domain to link into us instead ? Or equally important ? Dan Lærum
Link Building | | danlae1