Are you a link hoarder? When writing a blog post are you overly concerned about leaking link juice? Do you add a no-follow tag to all outbound links, regardless of whether they point to advertisers? When I first started blogging I was obsessed with hoarding link juice to myself and boy was I stupid! I even did a round-up post and marked every link as no-follow. What the heck was I thinking?
So much discussion in the SEO world revolves around retaining link juice to get a good search engine rank. But zero outbound links is not a good blogging strategy. I’m not suggesting you treat every post like a link farm, but hosting the occasional round-up will help more than it hurts.
Why you should be generous with your links
- The social web is reciprocal. Give first and you will receive. It’s human nature for people to want to repay generosity. They may just link to you for no good reason other than the fact that you linked to them first. It may seem counterintuitive, but if you want to build your backlinks start by freely giving out links to others.
- You’ll get noticed. When you link to another blog, a pingback is generated and the blogger gets notified. And when people click through the link on your site, the referral will show up in the “linkee’s” analytics. All of the bloggers I know love getting links and are often curious enough to click thru and check out your site if the link doesn’t appear to spammy. Building relationships by linking out to other sites has proven to make a difference.
- Some webmasters set their blogs to display pingbacks in the comment section of their posts. It’s not as common as it used to be, but if they do this, you’ll get a reciprocal link with little effort.
- Google not only looks at the quality of your inbound links when ranking but also your outbound links to authority sites. The Big G understands that if your website is linking to educational, high-authority websites that you are attempting to provide a better user experience.
- Your readers will appreciate useful outbound links and you’ll develop trust and repeat visitors. A link to a quality site that helps answer a question will make your post more useful and improve your credibility. It’s also smart to annotate your articles with supporting evidence so people don’t think you’re just pulling facts out of your ass.
- Using outbound anchor text that is relevant to your post topic helps Google categorize the content within your page (in a similar manner to anchor text on inbound links from other sites).
- Hoarding links can actually have a negative impact in the SERPs as well.
You may be using “no follow” incorrectly
The nofollow tag was created by Google to specify when a link is not supposed to pass any authority or page rank to the destination site. Their intent was mainly for links to advertisers. But since its introduction, the nofollow tag has been widely abused by webmasters wanting to prevent any link juice from leaving their site. The problem with this approach is if your site is filled with nofollow links you are effectively saying that you won’t vouch for any websites you link to. Do you think Google will consider this type of page as valuable? I doubt it, so be judicious with your use of nofollow.
When is link hoarding a good idea?
The only time you may want to consider excluding links is when you’ve got a reader in your sales funnel. If you’re trying to get a user to take a single action on a page then you may not want to provide any options other than your desired one.
So are you guilty of link hoarding? Maybe just a little?
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Well said Geoff. If bloggers try to make the web more useful, we might not be so freaking dependant on Google…. eventually.
Thanks Tom, very interesting interview by the way.
The NoFollow attribute was created in large part because of the massive comment spam popping up on unmoderated blogs. By making NoFollow the default in blogging platforms, the search engines would have a way to remove those links from the algorithm. Only a fairly engaged blogger would make the effort to DoFollow the comment links, and such bloggers would 99% of the time moderate out the sp.
Hi David, I agree. Nofollow has a very practical use for comment links as well.
I wrote a post about this a few years back.
This idea of “leaking PageRank” is silly.
It’s smart to link out to relevant sites/blog posts that add value to the post at hand and to no-follow such links doesn’t make sense.
Hi Gerald, thanks for visiting. Yes, there’s so much misinformation out there that it can be scary for new bloggers. They read that outbound links hurt your ranking so they start off on the wrong foot. There aren’t enough people telling the real story that outbound links can actually be helpful to blog growth.
Another point that you mentioned, that I’ll second.
I take notice of most of my trackbacks. So when someone writes a post makes a reference to me by linking to one of my post, not only do I notice, but I also appreciate that. I will typically take the time to check out their blog, probably comment on their post and maybe even shoot them an email or something.
So the point here is it gets attention and can be a big relationship starter.
But again if someone is giving you a vote of confidence by linking to you to expand on their post, it makes zero sense to no-follow that link.
Opening up your email and finding a trackback/pingback is gold. You just hope it’s not spam and then when you see it’s legit it makes you feel a little warm inside doesn’t it?
Oh sure. I just delete the spammy ones.
Yes, it gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling inside!
I too used to be guilty of being concerned with outbound links in my blog posts. What a fool I was! Today, I am more than happy to link to legitimate sites that would benefit the reader. For example, if my blog post makes a reference to something, but I don’t want to go into great detail about it in the post (because that isn’t what the post is about), then I will link to a great resource that further explains the referenced topic. Just one example of how one can use outbound linking the correct way in a blog post.
Hi Marshall, thanks for stopping by. That’s a great reason to link out…..no need to recreate the wheel if someone else has already said it.
Hi Geoff, Totally agree with you here! Linking out is a great way to network with other bloggers but should be used wisely. I think the benefits far outweigh any negatives.
Hi Niall, Absolutely, I’ve built a few relationships with other bloggers that just started with a link on either my site or theirs.
Those poor kitties!
Great post. Linking is a great way to network. I have actually been making more of an effort to link to other blogs recently. It has a huge benefit.
Miss T, you’re the first to mention those cats! How the heck did he even pick them up?….he must have had help, and they can’t be happy!
Geoff,
Thanks so much for writing this, it really is difficult to make connections with other people when you start out blogging because spammers have made everyone more cautious! I too think it’s very important to link to authority sites when you write an article, and it really does benefit your readers by giving them resources to relevant information.
You’re right Monica, it is sometimes very difficult to tell the difference between a spam trackback or comment and something legit. It often takes a couple more interactions than it used to just to gain some basic trust.
I think everyone is guilty of link hoarding a bit – I find myself doing it just because I’m too lazy to go find a link…
Hey Robert, I’ll admit that as well…..laziness is the number one reason why I don’t always include links when I should.
Geoff,
You are so right! When I started out every single sunday I would do a “link post” where I would link 5-15 posts that intrigued and interested me throughout the week.
It really did a lot for my networking and actually bringing people TO the site (since some people would seem to organically give links back).
Even after I have stopped doing the weekly link posts (I did them for over 6 months) I still have good relationships with many people I began to network with through those posts.
One thing I have found online is that there is a good “karmic balance” to things. That is when you try to help others DON’T think of yourself first all the time, people notice and you actually DO get more out of it too.
Hey Steve, Thanks for stopping by! I REALLY like your site…..no fluff and lots of actionable advice. Definitely a must read for serious internet marketers.
Steve, this is useful but I’ve noticed a worrying trend.
I’ve started to receive spam comments on my blog which link back to *legitimate* sites. Clearly the site owners are being promised big results from SEO companies, but instead of getting good links are suffering a terrible reputational hit instead.
Out of the goodness of my heart I email the companies concerned when I can to alert them to what’s going on – hopefully they come to their senses and fire these cheap “SEO gurus” forthwith, but the damage has already been done…
I’m tearing my hair out, trying to figure out why I have 9 outbound links from my blog. They are for sites that have nothing to do with my topic. I don’t even know how they got a outgoing link from my site. omg, can you tell me how they link out from my blog and I don’t see anything indicating they are even there. It’s airline travel, ipod,sales, something called $days. How do I break their connection to my site? Thanks so much for any help you can offer.
Jennie
Jennie, Sorry to tell you, but it sounds like you’ve been hacked. Here’s a service I use to clean up malware myself in case it helps you: Sucuri