Use External Links

[LeeC]

Hey

I noticed when analysing my pages that Moz gives the following advice about adding external links to my articles;

"On any page specifically targeting a keyword, link externally to at least one (and possibly more than one) relevant, trusted resources as a best practice."

As a small business I work pretty damn hard to get visitors to my website, so why on earth would I want to go to all that trouble just to send them away again to a trusted resouce?

Secondly, what exactly is a "trusted resource"? Can I simply use search and use the top competitor, for example Moz or Wikipedia and does the anchor need to be an exact match or will a partial suffice. I say this because I already have the top spot for my longtail, so an exact match would be pointless.

And lastly, I notice that pretty much all quality sites use external links to open in the same window i.e. not target=_blank, I never thought of it before today, but now that I'm considering using external linking in my articles I guess it's important to know the answer - i.e. Is this a best practice and does this give any seo benefit?

Cheers, Lee :)

[LeeC]

thanks for the share Linda, the first picture made me laugh out loud lol

Have to say this guys makes a relevant points and as you say definite food for thought.

Cheers, Lee

[Linda-Vassily]

Google's ranking factors are designed to improve the user experience [or so they say ], but a lot of them are definitely subjective ["Would you trust the information presented in this article?" for instance], so yes, it is sometimes hard to know exactly how to make that improvement.

But linking to a random high-rank site will not improve the user experience--the site has to be relevant. If you are writing on a very niche topic, there may not be a very high-rank site that is very relevant. Linking to a good (even if not super high rank) site that is very relevant will create an association for Google between that good site and its relevant content and your page, which is a positive thing. Google is looking at many quality signals at the same time and no single SEO "rule" can really apply equally in all situations.

[You might find this article interesting. The author has gathered a list of "known" Panda factors and where they were found (not the slickest piece you have ever seen but food for thought--a lot of comments as well).]

[LeeC]

Hi Linda,

thank you very much for taking the time to respond

The Moz advice (which I obtained from the page grading tool) definitely states that there are "seo benefits" from using external links to "trusted sources."

If we follow the logic behind this statement, it implies that these are Google trusted sources and not a personal preference (even given my niche related expertise), otherwise this would mean I could link to any external source, for example another site that I control or a colleagues or business partners site and gain an seo benefit.

Best Lee

[Linda-Vassily]

I wouldn't add an external link for the sake of an external link, but if I were writing about something and I thought that perhaps some of my readers could benefit from some background or additional information, I'd link to it, rather than making my article unnecessarily long and complex. A "trusted source" would be one that you, as an expert, trust. It should be a good-quality site but does not have to have rankings like Wikipedia.

As far as opening links in a new window, this is not considered to be a good thing. The user should be in charge of their browsing experience and should have the option to open a new tab or window only if they choose to. (An exception to this would be if there is some reason you need both pages open--say you are referring to content on another page and going through it step-by-sep, for example.)