Some SEO practices have changed over the years, most notably the way that outbound links are treated. It used to be that you weren’t encouraged to link outwardly all that much as doing so could bleed PageRank from your site.

Apparently, this practice isn’t frowned upon any longer because you won’t find too many SEO experts recommending that you avoid outbound linking. Sure, if you pull up articles written as recently as 2004 or 2005, the trend was to discourage outbound links, but as Eric Enge recently shared in his article, “The Role of Outbound Links” you are encouraged to link out, but cautiously and with authority.

Foundations of Outbound Linking

The purpose of outbound linking is not only to cite a qualified source, but to bring attention to your site. If you are seeking to build up a reputation as someone who thoughtfully links to authority sites, then you will be treated as an authority too. Of course, your content has to be accurate, well written, and interesting, therefore a careful linking out strategy is only part of the authority-building equation.

Once you have developed a sound linking strategy, then you’ll be considered as a site worth linking to. As Enge mentioned, research driven sites must cite their sources and they will only cite those which look good and have solid information worth citing.

Naturally, you’ll want to include those sites which aren’t your direction competition as citing your competitors may help them more than it will help you. This doesn’t mean that you don’t give credit where credit is due, but take care to make sure that you don’t build up your “adversary” at your expense.

Further Reading

Linking Out: The Overlooked Link Neighborhood

SEO Case Study: Outbound Links

SEO Outbound Link Relevance

Resource

Site Link Analyzer Tool