Google’s Matt Cutts Vindicates Controversial Theory Behind LinContEx.com
Posted by Antone Roundy under SEO15 Comments
One of the foundational principles behind LinContEx.com is that outbound links to quality content are good not only for the site being linked to, but also for the site doing the linking. SEO experts have been teaching this for a while, but even many experts are still reluctant to link out for fear of losing PageRank.
A few days ago, Google’s Matt Cutts posted an article to his blog about “PageRank sculpting“, or focusing a site’s PageRank on the pages you want optimized the most. The end of his article is a series of questions and answers, one of which vindicates LinContEx’s practice of encouraging members to put links on their content pages:
Q: Okay, but doesn’t this encourage me to link out less? Should I turn off comments on my blog?
A: I wouldn’t recommend closing comments in an attempt to “hoard” your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.
Clearly, Matt isn’t saying that any old outbound link is going to boost you in the search results. But if, as I’ve encouraged, you choose your link & content exchange partners based on relevance to your site’s content and quality of their content, then according to Matt, Google’s going to reward you. His comment at worst implies that the “reward” for good outbound links will be greater than “price” of any loss of raw PageRank points.
It makes sense really. Google wants to send their users to the pages that they’ll get the most value out of. If they don’t, their users might switch to another search engine. Which will a user get more value out of: a page that has to stand entirely alone on the merits of the content it contains, or a page that contains great content and links to other high-quality content on the same topic?
Google pours a lot of time and money into tweaking their algorithms to provide the best possible search results. So it only makes sense that, especially in the long run, you’re going to rank highest if you do things that provide the most value possible to users.
If you’re fixated on the idea that PageRank is an almighty force that you must accumulate at all costs, you’re not going to build the kinds of webpages that Google wants to link to. Instead, you’re going to be fighting an eternal uphill battle against their engineers as you try all sorts of unnatural things to put lipstick on your piggish webpages.
On the other hand, if you focus on providing as much value as possible to your website’s human visitors, then the better Google gets at recognizing valuable webpages, the higher you’ll rank.
Looking over the feeds that have been submitted to LinContEx, there are more than a few that I would not recommend exchanging with. That’s to be expected — any time an SEO system is created, it’s going to attract people who put more effort into gaming the system than providing value. That’s why I made it super easy to vote bad feeds down — all you have to do is click that little frowny face.
The quality content that should be naturally attracting inbound links will rise to the top and get more links. The junk that doesn’t deserve to be seen will fall to the bottom, out of sight.
Linking to the high quality content will add value to your webpages. And that — adding value — is the best SEO strategy.

Easy ways to return the favor of writing this blog post for you:
- Click one of the icons below to share it with your friends.
- Post a thoughtful comment, or better yet...
- Use this post to start a post on your blog: copy something to quote and then add your comments -- include a link to this page and you'll get a trackback link to your post.
Thanks!
Related Posts
- Link Trading Using Deep Links?
- Blogrolls Are Boring!
- Google’s Matt Cutts Vindicates Controversial Theory Behind LinContEx.com
- The PageRank Myth
June 17th, 2009 at 8:56 am
[…] and content exchange” site I launched recently, the design of which depends heavily on the SEO value of outbound links, so I’ve posted in more detail on the subject there. Bookmark This Post: […]
June 17th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Anybody with SEO experience will testify that linking to Authority sites is as good as links from them. PageRank is a much over valued parameter because its not the case that the sites with the highest PR rank top. Its a proven fact. Of course the thing to avoid is having more outbound links than inbound.
Antone said”I’ve noticed that a lot of people who’ve joined LinContEx have
submitted feeds, but haven’t submitted any exchange pages.”
No antone, i just havent had the time to do anything on this yet….Internet = Information Overload. :)
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:27 am
I have come accross a clear example of a new blog with about 20 posts all on the same subject with each blog post linking out to a quality and relevant site ranking #1 for a competitive keyword with PR0. A clear indication that outbount links are influencing ranking probably more than ever before.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:47 am
It would appear your software is evolving … something that few others do.
Linking and content are the two main ingredients for seo
March 11th, 2010 at 3:43 am
So, how do we value a website we link to as “quality website” at a glimpse? Can we say it from the Pagerank? I don’t think so. I see a lot of low Pagerank sites (0-1) and value them as quality websites in my mere mortal eyes, but not sure if Google perceive it as I do.
March 11th, 2010 at 10:09 am
Good question. I’d be wary of PR0 websites, just in case they got that way by being penalized.
Beyond that, if the content is going to benefit your readers, then it’s good. If it looks like somebody handed a formula to a trained monkey who followed it and pounded out a keyword-optimized PLR article, your readers aren’t going to like it, so don’t link to it.
I don’t know whether there is a way to decide “at a glance” what’s good content. You can sometimes recognize bad quickly when the site design is so horrible that it’s difficult to read the content. But most of the time, you’ll probably have to read the content to decide.
May 15th, 2010 at 12:10 am
It is difficult to clearly control all the links that you send out from your site, I mean… this mean we also have to consider if the links in the comments are related to our niche/subject… ?
I think the best way is just to link build as natural as possible… the more we try to think about it, the more energy we spend and then google goes out there and change the rules.
just my 2 cents mate.
July 21st, 2010 at 5:01 am
As much as Internet marketers and SEO people focus on websites which have high PageRanks, it’s important not to forget that people are only going to keep visiting your website if you provide them with good content and good links. Repeat visitors (and a loyal fanbase) is what is going to keep your website going strong for years.
September 28th, 2010 at 12:30 am
A link or two to more good content can hardly be a bad thing so why not link out to decent content?
I’m not actually conviced how much weight it has in the algorithm but if you are providing more value to visitors it has to count for something!
June 29th, 2011 at 9:20 am
Outbound links? are only valuable if everything else is (content, inbound links, ect)… if the case where that you could fill a page with outbound to authority sites ect… nobody would need SEO
June 29th, 2011 at 9:27 am
Well said, Aidan and David. Outbound links are just one of over 200 ranking factors. My main points here are that it IS a factor, and that PageRank also is just one of over 200.
December 29th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
This is an extraordinary article. I found it while researching the efficacy, or lack thereof, of outbound links and SEO. I notice in your last comment you mention there are over 200 ranking factors. Any thoughts as to where I could find these listed? Thanks.
December 29th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Michael, you won’t find an official list of ranking factors anywhere. Google intentionally keeps the details secret to prevent people from abusing the information to game the system.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Thanks Antone, although don’t you find that strange? Information is power, and if those of us who are trying to do the right thing, do the right thing, then the “internets” are a better place right?
I understand the potential for abuse, but if the ranking criteria stands firm doesn’t it logically follow that even the bad guys will follow the rules? If they do then it’s game, set and match right? Dang. I used a tennis metaphor and don’t even play tennis :-)
December 29th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
The problem is that the “rules” don’t specify behaviors, like “include useful or entertaining information in your content”, “link to good content”, “use the lingo of your target reader”, etc. They specify things like “our mathematical analysis of content that has been identified as good suggests that it typically has keyword density of 3-5%”. (I made those numbers up, so don’t anybody go out and use them.)
The bad guys see that and adjust their content to have the “perfect” keyword density. Does that make their content better? No. It usually means they mangle their content to force it into a the shape they think the search engines are looking for.
By the time they’ve fine tuned their content for every ranking factor, it’s a Frankenstein’s monster that no human can even understand.
Ranking factors — or at least the precise details of how they’re applied — aren’t a formula for creating great content. They’re statistics that come from analyzing lots of good lots of content and finding ways in which significant amounts of good content are similar.
What Google HAS published is webmaster guidelines that explain how to create content the way they like it. These are the things you need to know — not exactly what the 200+ mathematical measures are.
The guidelines are here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769