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Another great search engine optimization article from Axandra.com, focusing on Google Outbound Linking!

Last month, Google published an official statement about linking out to other websites. Some webmasters still think that linking to other websites might have a negative effect on their Google rankings. That is not the case.

Links to other websites can have a positive effect on your website if you link to the right websites. Here’s a summary of Google’s statements:

The good side of outbound links

Relevant links to other websites can help your website visitors. For example, you could provide your readers in-depth information about similar topics or you could offer your readers your commentary on existing resources.

Outbound links can also help your credibility. Links to the right websites show that you have done your research and that you have expertise in the subject manner. Good links to other websites can make visitors want to come back for more analysis on future topics.

A very positive effect on links to other websites is that they help you to build relationships with other domain experts. If you send visitors to another website then that website might send visitors to your website in return.

The bad side of outbound links

Links to other websites can have a negative effect on your website if you don’t monitor to which websites you link. According to Google, unmonitored (especially user-generated) links and undisclosed paid advertising outbound links can reduce your website’s credibility.

If your website allows user comments or other user created contents, then you should make sure that these comments are moderated and/or you should add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to user generated links.

Google doesn’t like paid links. If you accept money for outbound links, you should also add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link.

Google recommends not to have more than 100 links per web page. Too many links on one page confuse your website visitors.

Should you worry about the PageRank of the linked website?

Google makes it very clear that you shouldn’t worry about the PageRank of a website as long as you are linking to a website you believe your website visitors will enjoy.

It doesn’t matter if the linked website has a lower PageRank than your website as long as the website is somehow related to your site. According to Google, webmasters should consider outbound links as a common sense way to provide more value to their users, not as a complicated formula.

If you link to good websites, outbound links will have a positive effect on your site.

(As reported on Axandra.com’s Weekly SEO News, September 23, 2008)

A number 1 ranking in Google’s search results for the right keyword can mean a lot of visitors and a lot of sales. That’s why so many people want to be on Google’s first result page.

Unfortunately, many people still don’t know what it takes to convince Google that your website is more relevant than the millions of other websites on the Internet. There are four simple rules that will help you to get your website on Google’s first result page:

Rule #1: Don’t try to fool Google:

Google wants to return the most relevant web pages for a search query. They want to provide the best answer to a search query.

If you try to get a high ranking for a keyword for which your web page isn’t really relevant then you won’t get good results. Actually, you might be accused of spamming. If your website consists just of ads and affiliate links then it will be extremely difficult to get good rankings.

Make sure that your web pages will answer the questions of people who search for your keyword. The better your web pages match the interest of the web searchers the better rankings you will get. It takes some time to create good content but it will pay off in the long run.

Rule #2: Your web pages must show Google that they are relevant:

A website about used car parts cannot get high rankings for a keyword such as “brain surgery”. A high ranking for the keyword “used car parts” would be very beneficial to that site.

The problem is that Google must be able to find out that your web page is relevant for the keyword “used car parts”. For that reason, you have to optimize your web pages. Optimizing your web pages simply means that you make it easy for Google to find out what your website is about.

When Google visits your web pages, it will analyze the following elements of your web pages:

• The URL structure
• The title tag and the meta tags
• The body text
• Headline tags
• Image alt attributes
• Your site architecture and the internal linking structure of your site
• The outbound links
• Many other factors in the HTML code of your web pages

Each element can contain your keyword and show Google that your website is relevant for that keyword. This doesn’t mean that you can simply insert your keyword in these tags and that’s it.

You can also over-optimize a website and that can get your website banned from Google’s search results. It’s important that you optimize the right elements and that you insert your keywords in the right frequency. Analyzing dozens of web page elements can be very time consuming. IBP’s top 10 optimizer can help you to do this quickly and easily.

Rule #3: Other websites must confirm that your web pages are relevant:

In addition to optimized web page content, Google heavily relies on the links from other websites to your site. Basically, the other websites have to confirm that your website is relevant for a special keyword.

The more websites link to your website, the more visible it will be to Google. The more other websites use a special keyword as the linked text in the links to your website, the more important is your website for that keyword.

A web page that has been optimized for the keyword “used cars” can also get high rankings for the keyword “pre-owned cars” if enough websites link with that text to the page.

It is also important that the other web pages are related your site. If a website that is about vintage cars links to your “used car parts” website then this will have a bigger effect on your search engine rankings than a link from a candy shop website.

A link from a web page that only links to car related web pages is also more valuable than a link from a web page that links to all kind of pages. Getting the right links is crucial if you want to get on Google’s first result page. IBP’s link builder helps you to get these links.

Rule #4: Your website must have a clean history:

The age of your domain and its history will also be considered by Google. A domain name that has been around for a long time will get high rankings more easily.

However, if your domain name has been used by spammers before, you might still suffer from the ranking penalties that have been applied to the previous content.

If you follow the rules above and change your web pages accordingly, your website will get top rankings on Google. It cannot be done over night but it’s definitely something that can be done within a few weeks if you do the right things.