Linking out to relevant resources
-
Are there any do's & dont's for linking out to other helpful sites, has Moz got any best practice guides etc?
-
Feel absolutely free to link out as often as you like to as many sources, as long as those sources are high-quality. I personally do not recommend nofollowing links "just in case" they are spammy in the future; the vast majority of the links you create will be to sites that will never suffer a spam problem (and if you are ever worried, perform a check on your site's outbound links once or twice a year).
As Anirban says, a site that links out to trustworthy sites makes itself look more trustworthy in return. A very simplistic way of looking at this is that spam websites link to spam websites and to trustworthy websites. Trustworthy websites _only _link out to other trustworthy websites. So while you're not giving the sort of positive signal that likely results in improved rankings, you are failing to give a negative signal.
If the links are user-generated, place a nofollow tag on them, but if they are editorial and added by you because you appreciate the resource, you can do this as often as you like (within reason, still don't create massive pages with thousands of outbound links!).
-
As long as it's a decent, none malware hosting, none spammy site it won't have an adverse effect. If you trust the site and think it's passing a benefit to users then why not link those sites? it is a good sign of a trustworthy site if it links to good high quality sites as news sites, wikipedia, forbes, about.com, government sites, etc. I believe that it makes my pages richer information sources. I believe that it builds credibility.
Though I will prefer a no-follow tag on those links as a precaution if that sites becomes a spammy site in future. It will not effect your vistors not passes the link juice to the sites you are linking.
I believe that google gives credit for linking out and even if they don't your visitors will.
Hope this helps !
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
-
How to link build?
Hello all. I've been having intense conversations with an experienced SEO, who has told me that the only way to get consistent links to your website, and to build you business through the web is through blogger outreach, and then paying the bloggers to put your appropriate content on their high Page Ranking website. To me, this may well be right. But it sounds dull as anything. Any thoughts? William
Link Building | | wseabrook0 -
Will short linking to my site affect SERPs attribution of inbound link?
Some brand partners are using their short links to link back to our site (like bit.ly but they have their own). They have a high domain authority and trust so we want that link back to be read by Google. When I downloaded all inbound links from Moz, this brand's site was not listed, making me worried that the inbound link isn't being seen or considered! Haven't been able to find any info on this...
Link Building | | PAC31350 -
Bearshare links?
I am doing competitor link research and so far 4 of the 4 have had links from search.bearshare.net What kind of site is this? I am sure it isn't valuable but I can't figure out how it is getting crawled.
Link Building | | EcommerceSite0 -
Old Non Relevant Links
I'm currently working on a project where most of the links are from irrelevant sources referring to the site of the past domain owner. My question is should I remove as many of these as possible or let them be for now. My gut tells me for every new link I build that I should attempt to remove some of the old ones but I'm not exactly sure on how to proceed with this situation. Thanks in advance for any input.
Link Building | | brandonschultz0 -
Link-Building
Hello, I have been doing link-building for my website since 2 of January. However those links are not in the Open Site Explorer. For example I have the DMOZ website pointing to my website and I cant see it in open site explorer! Why?? Tks in advance!
Link Building | | PedroM0 -
What link would be better?
Okay, I found a niche blog that has a google PR6. They have a ton of dollow blogroll links, as well as a ton of internal links on homepage. Would I be better off getting the blogroll link? Getting a link in an existing post with a lower PR? Getting an advertiorial written with a link in it? I just don't know. It has a domain authority of 33 currently. It's not a cheap link for blogroll. The in-post, or advertorial isn't too bad, but not cheap either. Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | azguy0 -
Different Link Titles Linking to the same page
So I'm doing a lot of link building but my question is how do search engines treat different link titles to the same page. For example, my main page is www.musillawfirm.com If I have 20 links from 20 sites linking to it as Melbourne FL DUI Lawyer and 20 more linking as Melbourne FL immigration Lawyer and More linking as Cocoa FL DUI lawyer etc... what happens? Do the search engines just rank me higher for all the terms or would it be better to always just link to separate landing pages? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | musillawfirm0