Quandary with outbound links seeking thoughts with today's theories?

1. 82

   tsmogposted 19 months ago

   I have read that outbound links have value for a Hub related to Google ranking. Here is a quote form Moz.com; "The target and source pages and domains cited in a link also provide valuable relevancy metrics for search engines. Links tend to point to related content. This helps search engines establish knowledge hubs on the Internet that they can then use to validate the importance of a given web document." That importance is the referenced Hub is it not? So, an internal outbound link contributes nothing to the Hub itself? Besides curiosity asks me purpose would be to direct a reader away from my article lowering engagement. So, the only value I see is with directing to  a blog or website I manage?

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   1. 94

      Kylyssaposted 19 months ago in reply to this

      Links are there to serve the readers and to support the content. If a link provides no added value to the reader and doesn't give the piece the added credibility of independent sources, get rid of it unless it's supportive advertisement.

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      1. 0

         calculus-geometryposted 19 months ago in reply to this

         +1 this is the best advice, no need to over-think it.

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2. 93

   Marisa Wrightposted 19 months ago

   A few years ago, a Hubber did an experiment whereby he created a "Further Reading" section at the end of each of his Hubs, and linked to 10 solid reference sites on the topic (i.e. not Wikipedia).   He found that his traffic increased.
   
   I (and several others) copied his example and yes, it did seem to improve traffic.  The theory is that links out to other sites on the same topic show that your Hub is in a "good neighbourhood", and proves you have researched your subjects well to know about those sites.
   
   I'm not sure I would do it now, though - because at the time, it was possible to add capsules below the comments capsule, so we could put our "Further Reading" section right at the bottom of the Hub, under the comments, so most readers would never see it (but Google would!).  So if I were doing it today, I would limit it to three or four very well-chosen links.
   
   Note that you will get a warning if you create a capsule that has several links one after the other, but you can safely ignore it provided your links are genuinely useful to the reader.

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