OBLs and TrustRank

[Jim Westergren]

Recently a SEO Company told me that outbound links are very important to high rankings and backlinks are actually not so important.

I was really puzzled ...

That theory would be based on that linking to authority sites would give your site more trust and thus rank higher in the SERPs.

Today I noticed that this forum is linking to Google.com ...

I assume it is based on the same theory.

Could anyway shed some light on this? Has it been tested? Proven?

Thanks!

[rustybrick]

This forum is linking to Google only because I feel it is a link the forum members would find useful.

I did not put the link to Google on this forum to increase our rankings.

Inbound links are way more valuable then outbound links. But it is also important to link outwards. Think about your user, not a search engine.

[dazzlindonna]

heh, given the choice of linking to google.com or getting a backlink from google.com, i'd choose the latter, thank you very much. :)

however, linking to strong, related sites that would be useful to the user is a good thing, and i always make sure there are some of those on my sites.

[Jim Westergren]

Ok thanks a lot.

Yeah, make it for the visitor at the first hand - so true.

But probably outbound links has a value also, but not as important as this company told me.