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I have seen a few "lucky"(?) companies dominate spots 1-5 of search results. When I see that, I generally go to #6, 7, or even 10 before clicking. My gut reaction is that the company with 1-5 has manipulated content just to pull me in - much like the guys on the streets of NYC or Vegas shoving handbills at you. Is there any evidence/research/poll about the consumer/user reaction when this occurs?

This has been bothering me for a long time. Our company has a sub-domain blog that gets a respectable amount of traffic but not a lot of SER. Most of our traffic comes from social shares (although we do rank really high for a few key searches). The blog manager is convinced that providing external links to additional resources or source material "dilutes the SEO juice" for the blog. URLs are provided, but they aren't linked. Attempts to sway her to the idea that external links are actually Good Things® have been stonewalled. Tell me I'm right and why.

There doesn't seem to be a definitive (or even authoritative) answer to this. The quandry is primary top navigation - the client wants to use 2-3 keyword length nav items, and I'm politely forcing him to use single word nav. The problem is that I have nothing to back up that assertion other than "this way looks better". Examples - Site is www.buybluewidgets.com. The client wants: About Our Blue Widgets Buy a Blue Widget Azure Widget Information Sell Your Blue Thingamajig My suggestion is: About Us Buy Learn Sell