This is a guest post by Floris from FirstTimePokerPlayer.com.
Do you keep records of link exchanges mainly to keep track of your backlinks and to be able to remove the reciprocal link from your site in case one of those backlinks disappears?
Are you regularly linking out to what you consider relevant, well written and authoritative articles, or are you regularly linking out to high PR/well backlinked pages which are linking back to you and sometimes just happen to be relevant, well written and/or authoritative as well?
Do you think that linking out to a relevant, well written and/or authoritative page without anything showing for it in return is a ‘losing’ strategy?
Why?
Although outgoing links can be votes for your competitors’ content; although page rank is said to flow away from your site through outgoing links; although visitors can leave your site using outgoing links and, assuming an affiliate code isn’t attached to them, all this won’t even directly make you any money, outgoing links can add value to your site, to you. Crazy thought, isn’t it?
Say you’re a poker player looking to improve your betting strategy and somehow you miraculously end up finding this guide about betting in poker. You start reading and end up studying this page because it’s just the thing you were looking for. Once arrived at the bottom, you find some links to other articles covering the same topic or going more in depth into one specific topic only touched upon in the original article itself. And the best thing is: these articles are all really helpful and well written too.
Wouldn’t you think that the initial page to you as a visitor is even more valuable with than without the outgoing links on it? Wouldn’t you be more compelled to click through to a page of this same site again the next time you see it popping up in the SERPs, because, hey, if the page itself doesn’t help you, then maybe you’ll find some other helpful links again? Isn’t the added benefit of some valuable links to you as a user also a benefit to the webmaster of this site?
Now you’re just some hard to convert strategy visitor, but maybe next time you’re looking for a better room to play at.
If, as a webmaster, your outgoing links add value to your site, why would you require a reciprocal link to keep it in place? Granted, it wouldn’t be very professional/respectful of a fellow webmaster to just remove a reciprocated link. And to be honest, that alone could be reason enough to remove your link to him. But you could also communicate with the webmaster about it. Who knows, maybe a more fruitful partnership will evolve from what started as a misunderstanding.
Of course, when you do link out as part of a link exchange you’d like the deal to be fair. But there’s more value in external links than just the passage of PR. Some of this value might also be longer term. Think about that when you require a webmaster to promise you to build more backlinks in order for you to even think about exchanging links with a site containing content you admit to be good.
Linking out to quality content has another benefit: you don’t have to go through the hassle of hiding your in content reciprocal link from your visitors. You don’t have to make them visible for the search engines only; that would even decrease their value for you! You could even promote them, be proud to have them!
Do you link out on your own?
“As long as you don’t think it’s linking out without your mother holding your hand I’d say:
why not?”