Because hyperlinks are the main tool used to travel from one web page to another, search engines pay a lot of attention to the relationships between pages that are linked together. On the most basic level, everything having to do with link-building in SEO is based on the relationships that these links create. Each relationship created has consequences in the eyes of the search engines, based on the characteristics of the link in question. If you understand the nature of these consequences, then you can maximize the effectiveness of both inbound and outbound links, which allows for skillful SEO.
Appearing Important: Inbound Links
A lot of people are concerned with receiving links from bad neighborhoods. In reality, these links cannot hurt you for a very simple reason. If receiving some specific type of link could lead to being penalized in the search engines, then you could send links of this type to your competitors to take them down. The search engines can never allow a scenario like this to take place, so you don’t have to worry about “bad links” that end up being pointed at your site over time. With this in mind, it’s important to truly realize that a link to your site can never hurt you, and not to worry about it.
In the worst case scenario, an inbound link simply wouldn’t be counted. There are two main factors that matter for inbound links, and they both matter a lot. The first factor is the PageRank of the page you’re receiving a link from, since this allows search engines to objectively measure the popularity and authority of pages. The second factor is the context of the link, which includes where the link is located in the content and what the anchor text is of the link.
An inbound link from a PR0 site with a topic that is irrelevant to the content of your website is one of the lowest-quality links you can get. Along similar lines, the best links to get are from pages that have some PageRank, but that also make sense in terms of context. The bottom line on inbound links is that when high-PageRank sites and sites that are relevant to your niche or industry link to your site, then your site seems important to the search engines.
Appearing Legitimate: Outbound Links
While search engines understand that you aren’t in complete control of the inbound links to your site, you are held completely responsible for all outbound links from the pages of your site. Because of this, when it comes to avoiding relationships with bad neighborhoods, or IP addresses where spam websites are known to be hosted, monitoring your outbound links is critical.
If your site allows users to post their own content, like blog comments or forum posts, then your site is especially vulnerable to outbound links to bad neighborhoods, and safeguards should be put in place to regulate all user-generated links. The best safeguard is to automatically make all user-generated links have the nofollow tag. This will prevent an association to a bad neighborhood since search engines will not follow through the link to see what has been linked to. It’s a common blackhat method to take down a competitor by getting links to bad neighborhoods posted somewhere on the competitor’s website.
Because links to spammy websites in bad neighborhoods hurt you, it stands to reason that outbound links to authority sites in your industry or niche can help you. This shows legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of the search engines, which is built on the idea of high-quality linking relationships with high-quality sites. If you keep in mind that it’s the quality of your outbound links that matter, then it’s easy to appear legitimate to the search engines and build authority for your own site.
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