Alright, time for a Frugal Business lesson in SEO 101. Even if you don't know a lot about internet marketing, you understand the incredible power of search engines for helping or hurting your business. It doesn't matter what kind of business you have, customers / prospects / and competitors will be finding your websites and posts on search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Your search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and page/site rankings can factor heavily into what sites get picked up by search engines and how easily they are found. One way to improve your page ranking is to eliminate excess external links.
OK so now that you know that reducing external links on your site can improve your site rank and SEO, does that mean you should eliminate all of them? Of course not. You have to weight the pros and cons and walk a fine line with balance. External links, or links in general, on your site can not only reduce your page rank, but take readers away from your site and content. But if you don't include any links, your content might be lower quality and you won't be able to do nearly as much cross-promotional work (which can often times bring you much more traffic and higher page ranks than avoiding it just because it's a link). The point of this is just to make you aware that extra links on your site might be holding you back, and only to post important links. Don't post links for the sake of posting links like a lot of n00bs do at first. Make the ones you do post count and carry their own weight!
Search engine algorithms are always changing, and extra external links might do more or less damage to your site ranking over time, but this simple trick is always a good one to know about!
And remember, if you are going to be using outbound links, make sure they open in a new window. And if the links are spammy or promotional, use the "nofollow" designation.
Published By Michael J. Schiemer
Owner & Marketing Consultant
RESULTS Business Solutions
Boston, Massachusettshttp://twitter.com/mikeschiemer
