Why use forward links for seo

It’s an interesting question that occasionally crops up in the SEO Theory search referrrals. Funny thing is, I’ve never actually written about this topic. “Why use forward links for SEO” — I can think of a hundred reasons, none of them ever really meriting much discussion from either me or anyone else in the SEO community (of whom I’m aware).

Sure, people talk about using forward links for various reasons. Jim Boykin wrote a very popular post arguing that who you link to matters when SEOmoz converted its profile links to use “rel=’nofollow’”. More than one SEO pundit has explained that linking to “bad neighborhoods” (DUN-dun-dunhhh) could get you into trouble.

The old “Google-bowling” theory suggests that forward links can be used to hurt other people (I’m actually observing a test now, although I did not set it up — I’ve never tried to “bowl” any sites out of search results).

Outbound links have been mistreated by the SEO community from day one, as far as I’m concerned. Many SEO forums still forbid people from linking out to their own sites (or they impose “rel=’nofollow’” on outbound links). They have done this as a matter of principle, hoping to preserve PageRank or Crawl, rather than to avoid being caught promoting “bad” sites. The practice was implemented by the first SEO forums.

Outbound links certainly provide some benefits for search engine optimization, but not all the benefits have been openly catalogued. People understand that you can help other sites be crawled, earn credibility, and rank better with your outbound links. But there is more to it than that when it comes to search engine optimization.

You can be strategic with your outbound links in ways that have nothing to do with imagined search engine algorithm weightings for “bad neighborhoods” and “credibility”. Authority ain’t got nothing to do with it, either.

For example, if you create a Web directory page about a specific topic, you’re implying to all kinds of visitors that your destinations are all related to the topic. If you create enough directory-like pages (I’m not talking about “SEO friendly” Web directories), you can establish a reasonable footprint for a group of Web sites whose associations with each other have not previously been noted by search engines.

What does that mean for search engine optimization? It means you can influence the crawl of your own site by pointing links at sites that link to your site. Yes, that is link reciprocation, which has earned a bad name through the years. But reciprocation in itself is not a bad thing. Reciprocation done to excess is what gets people into trouble.

Reciprocating natural links harms no one. You don’t have to call anyone, email anyone, or do anything annoying to reciprocate natural links. Those links may get you crawled occasionally. If you help get them crawled more often, then they may help get you crawled more often. Just keep the reciprocity to a low percentage of your link profile.

You can also use outbound or forward links to build interest in new or previously undiscovered sites. If you create a lot of content, that content can consistently promote specific sites over existing sites. You gradually siphon loyal traffic away from older sites by showing people that some new sites are worthy of their time and attention (of course, they have to be actually worthy of someone’s time and attention).

You can leverage low-traffic sites as easily as high-traffic sites if you create interesting links and content. Remember that providing searchers with the content they are looking for brings them to your sites in the first place. So if you’re promoting a new real estate site in a congested area, you want to capture people’s attention for the most recent query trends — trends the older, established sites are not likely to have devoted much content to.

No matter how old and trusted a site may be, no matter how many links a site may have pointing to it, if you create relevant content it doesn’t match and get your content indexed and ranking, you have an advantage over the older site. Some older sites have simply shriveled up and died off just because they could not keep up with the changes in user search trends.

You can also organize forward links to improve your on-page emphasis of keywords. SEOs love to write top ten (or top seven) lists and create link lists. Some SEO blogs specialize in link lists. By repeating your keywords in your outbound anchor text, you actually make your page more relevant to the keywords. That’s a cheap trick but it still works pretty well in many queries.

Linking out is more effective than asking for links because linking out puts you in control. It’s easier for you to create links than it is for you to obtain them, so you might as well create useful links that benefit as many people as possible. Those benefits make you a more useful resource.

Why use forward links for SEO? Because most SEOs don’t yet use them effectively.

‘Nuff said (for now).