True or false?: Linking to other Web sites will actually hurt your ownWeb site’s rankings on the search engines.
False…
…usually.
When the search engines rank your Web site, they consider thousands of factors. In these assessments, links TO your Web site from other Web sites are very important. However, links you provide FROM your Web site to other Web sites are considerably less important, and they are rarely harmful to your own ranking.
An Example
A home improvement ownerhas only a small budget to create content for his Web site. He decides instead to offer his Web site visitors information about his new line of replacement windows by linking from his Web site to the Web site of his window manufacturer.
According to Google’s Golden Rules of Search Engine Optimization (which are not printed anywhere, so don’t try to find them), this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Linking from a Web page about replacement windows to another Web page about replacement windows is like ice cream and apple pie to Google. From Google’s point of view, this is the way the Web should be.
Don’t Link to Spam
The only time I’ve ever seen outbound links hurt a Web site’s search engine ranking is when those links point to unsavory or scammyWeb sites. Payday loans, adult material, male potency…you get the idea.
Google and the rest of the search engines don’t love these kinds of Web sites…and will occasionally penalize a Web site for linking to them. I’d get more technical, but I don’t want to induce narcolepsy in my readers.
The Real Reason Not to Link
The real reason not to link from your Web site actually has nothing to do with search engine optimization. And it has everything to do with improving the lead generation potential of your Web site. In short, you don’t want a potential prospect leaving your Web site to go somewhere else. Once you have a homeowner’s attention, don’t lose it by sending them to another Web site. As often as not, they won’t return.
The nature of the Internet is that there’s always another Web site to look at and spend time on. Keeping visitors on your own Web site increases the likelihood that they’ll generate a phone call or a Web form.
Linking Away – Safely
If you find you do need to link to your Web site to another Web site, don’t do it on your most popular pages, such as your home page. You can often include such links on your site map, or at the bottom of your FAQs. But my advice is to add outbound links in ways that will provide search engine value to those other Web sites, but which will rarely be found by your visitors.
So, if you are going to link to other Web sites, just be smart about it. Remember that every homeowner who visits your own Web site is precious. Make the most of each and every visit by keeping visitors there as long as you can.
Homeowner Connections Through Performance Online Advertising
