The Internet is comprised of billions upon billions of websites that are all interconnected. There is a reason it’s called the World Wide Web after all. Site A links to Site B and Site C. Site B links to site D. Site C links to site A and D. Now multiply that by infinity and you’ve got the Internet! It’s impossible for any one site to exist separate from the rest. Even if that site has never actively linked to another (outbound link building), they cannot control who links to them (natural link building). There are few, if any, site owners that want their site to exist on the fringes of the Web, so they turn to search engine optimization and off-site link building for help. The benefits of off-site link building are numerous: increased trust factor with the search engines, an increase in traffic from multiple sources and a stronger online presence, to name a few.
But what about outbound linking? Instead of trying to get a link from a 3rdparty site pointing to yours, you put a link on your site that points to another. What are the benefits and the risks of outbound link building?
Benefits of Outbound Linking:
1. Quid Pro Quo links
One of the potential benefits of outbound link building is building a relationship with the sites you are linking to, which could lead to inbound links for you from their sites. For instance, if you reference a blog post written by another site in one of your blog posts, that’s an outbound link. You aren’t using that link because that other site is paying you or trading your for it; you are using it to supplement your own blog post. They aren’t required to link to you in return, but they might reference one of your blog posts some day in one of theirs.
Keep in mind there is a very fine line between outbound linking building between two related sites and a link exchange, which is often considered black hat. Actively asking to go link-for-link with another site is frowned upon by the search engines, who look at it as an attempt to game the system.
2. Help Your Visitors
This is especially beneficial for outbound links coming from your blog. Chances are you are not the only one online writing about your industry. There are potentially hundreds if not thousands of other bloggers talking about exactly the same thing! Linking to some of these other blogs actually helps boost your credibility and can turn your site into a valuable resource for your readers. Linking to other blogs outs a lot of information right at the fingertips of your readers. If you blog earns the reputation of being a trusted source of information, people will come to you first! They know that your blog has its finger on the pulse of the industry and has the outside facts/data to back it up.
Risks of Outbound Linking
1. Each Outbound Link Is an Exit
This is probably the biggest risk associated with outbound link building. After all the work you do to get a visitor to your site, they can easily click right out through an outbound link! Some of them might eventually come back, but there is no guarantee of that. There is a lot of clutter and even more distractions online that could keep your visitor from returning. Think about it, how often have you started searching for something and ended up watching funny videos of cats. You didn’t plan on watching videos of cats and you certainly didn’t set out to find them, but a few outbound links later and there you are. Do you remember how you got there? Are you really going to click the back button all the way to the beginning or are you just going to start over again with the search engines?
2. You Can’t Control Other Sites
Sites come and go every day. Some are just deleted, others are rebranded, moved to a new domain, go stagnant and so forth. When was the last time you checked all the sites you have outbound links pointing towards? Just like you can’t always control what kind of sites are linking to yours, you can’t control what someone else does with a site that you’re linking to. You have to be careful that you aren’t accidentally linking to a “bad” site (pornography, gambling, etc) or any other site that could potentially damage your site’s trust factor.