I set up a separate page on my web site and call it a resource page. This is NOT a links page or a "My Favorite Links" page. This page provides external links to highly relevant resources for my visitors. Think of it as adding "free" content to your website that is contributed by the best websites around.

Who Should You Link Out To? (Reverse Links)

"who should you link to" is a very serious question and one and will have a significant impact on your future search engine placements. When you link to other highly relevant, external, sites, you are telling the Search Engines - "This site has highly appropriate content that compliments my site and it will add to my visitors overall enjoyment."

The potentially positive impact is so great there is a need for a number of
considerations when determining which web site that you should link to. Factors that must be considered in making this determination are:

1) Is the potential site's content related to your sites content? Just like a good incoming link strategy (sites linking to you), the relevance of the content found on both sites must be high. If you put a bunch of links from your site out to other websites which have completely unrelated content, the value of these links will produce negligible results. Actually they will tend to rapidly reduce the perceived value of your own site.

2) Are you trying to link to a competitor? Since we are linking "out" and we are not looking for a linking partner your ultimate interests must be considered. Do you really want to link to a site that provides the same, or very similar, products and/or services as you provide? Unless that site is willing to reciprocate with a link and they have a higher PageRank than you do that is NOT a good idea!

3) What is the PageRank of the other website? The majority of people falsely believe that outbound links hurt your SE placement. Actually the opposite is the truth. Poor link-building is the biggest cause of these misconceptions, not the actual link. Always check the PageRank assigned by Google when you are choosing whether to link to another site. Like the boost a relevant link from a high PageRank site gives to your site in the incoming links it can have a positive effect on your outbound (reverse) links. If all of your outbound links go to highly regarded sites (as seen by the search engines) and their content is complimentary to your site then these links will definitely gain you higher rankings.

Finding the Links

Where is the best place to look for links to boost your search engine placement? The best place to start looking is the search engines themselves. Searching will easily produce hundreds of "potential" links. Actually, if you did the proper initial research for your keyword and niche selection you will already have a lot of this information.

Best Practices for Reverse Linking

Here are some important considerations to make regarding how to organize those new outbound links for maximum benefit. The absolutely most important thing is to create a "Resources Page". Call it a "Resources Page", or "Additional Resources", or something similar, rather than a "Links Page". This is not only for a better consideration by the search engine but also for your visitors.

Placing the majority of these reverse (outbound) links on their own page avoids
affecting the optimization and search engine considerations of the rest of your
website. It also gives you a "page" to place all those new links on as they come in.

Each outbound link should look something like the following example linked from a lighthouse web site: "For the enthusiast this collection of unique nautical gifts is truly in a class by itself. They offer magnificently handcrafted nautical coin jewelry." The link ('Custom Nautical Jewelry') opens in a new window when the visitor clicks on it.

Each link should have a descriptive text within it (not the ambiguous "click here") and there should be a high quality description of the web site just below the link (remember presell'). If you don't know what to include as the description, just ask the site owner, they are often very pleased that you are putting so much care into the a link to their site. If you are lucky the webmaster might even suggest a reciprocal link - but let them suggest it - you do NOT suggest it.

Very Important note- Remember to have these outbound links open in a new window. If you are using the SiteBuildIt format, as opposed to uploading your own pages, then use the traffic link tool and check "Open in an new window". I am appalled at the number of websites that don't do this (Yes, I have messed up and done the same thing without thinking). You must keep the visitor in your site, even if your site is now in a browser beneath the one being viewed. You have a much higher chance, by an overwhelming 100 to 1 that the visitor will actually return to your site this way. If they leave your site, because they have clicked on one of those outbound links, then you probably want get them back since they have completely left your site.

By putting these practices into place you will shorten the time it takes for the major search engines to spider your site. But first you still have to build a content rich site and use SiteBuildIt's Analyze tool to optimize those web pages. The strategy I have provided gives your visitors even more valuable content for the search terms they are entering. Link building is the icing but without the cake 9a content rich. SE friendly site) it amounts to nothing.

Michael Domeck
www.the-best-light-houses.com
www.homefurnishingsforless.com