We all know that incoming links are necessary if you want to get a high ranking on Google. Usually we all get incoming links by exchanging links with other sites. That's the way the game is played.

This is fine except many people do it all wrong. If you place the link to the other site on your home page (or on any of your high ranking pages), you are shooting yourself in the foot. Here's why . . .

The PageRank any web page has available to pass on to the page it's linking to is the PageRank of the page divided by the number of outgoing links on the page.

For example, if your Home Page has a PageRank (PR) of 4, and you have 2 outgoing links on the page, you are passing along a PR boost of 4 divided by 2 or a PR boost of 2. (Actually it's 2 multiplied by 0.85 because Google uses a damping factor.)

You are probably linking all of the pages of your web site to all of your other pages. This is a good practice because it boosts the PR of all of your web pages. But when you have outgoing links you "leak" PageRank to external pages. This "lost" PR is then no longer available to boost the PR of YOUR pages.

Therefore, it would be much better to place your outgoing links to the other sites on a Links page (or call it a Resources page). If your Links (or Resources) page has a PR=1 and has 20 outgoing links, you are not leaking much PR boost at all. This would save most of your PR boost so you could pass it along to your own pages. (Remember, almost all Links pages have a PR=1 or less because no one has incoming links to their Links page.)

Putting your outgoing links on a low-ranking Links page is not "dirty pool." After all, in the "bricks and mortar" world, your barber may let you put your business card on his bulletin board, but I doubt if he would let you put up a banner in his front window.

Your barber will give you token support, but he doesn't want to hurt his business just to help you. It's the same thing in the Internet world with links.

Of course, you would like to get the site you are swapping links with to put their link to your site on their Home page (or one of their other high-ranking pages). Ask for it. Many times you will get it.

Hint: Look over web sites that you want to link to your site and find a page that has a high PR and one that uses your keywords. Then suggest that they place your link on that page. (This will probably be their Home page, but not always.) Sometimes they will do this and it will help you a lot more than it would if they linked to your site from their Links page.

BOTTOM LINE: Take 10 minutes to create a Links page and then move all of your outgoing links to your new low-ranking "Links" page (or call it a "Resources" page) and you will NOT be "leaking" nearly as much PR boost as you would be losing with the outgoing links being placed on your high-ranking Home page.

This is one of the inside secrets the "big guys" use to get their sites to rank high.

By the way, if you're placing any outgoing links on your Home page, be aware that you are doing the site you're linking to a very BIG favor. . . Get a big favor in return.

Jerry Minchey

Copyright 2003 - 2004

Note: This article may be reproduced if it is reproduced in it's entirety and the statement below is prominently included at the end of the article.

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Jerry Minchey is a long time student and practitioner of search engine optimization and is the editor of the website, www.SearchEngineU.com which is dedicated to showing search engine beginners how to achieve high rankings on Google and other search engines using website optimization techniques. ========================================================