Biggest SEO Myth: PR Drain

[ishan]

I just read this post at Daily Blog Tips: Linking Out Will NOT Reduce The Google PageRank of Your Pages

Have you had similar view of PR(bucket view)? I had always thought that PR works like this. However, Daniel is quite clear that relevant links will never hurt anyone!

So, was all the PR drain stuff hype?

[stephen todd]

Originally Posted by ishan

I just read this post at Daily Blog Tips: Linking Out Will NOT Reduce The Google PageRank of Your Pages

Have you had similar view of PR(bucket view)? I had always thought that PR works like this. However, Daniel is quite clear that relevant links will never hurt anyone!

So, was all the PR drain stuff hype?

Even the article admits that linking out to external sites reduces the amount of link juice you can re-circulate to your own pages through site navigation links - so the argument is flawed

Books have been written about channelling pagerank - it involves sacrificing the pagerank of a number of pages of a site in order to artificially boost the pagerank of your "money pages" - involving a complicated robots text file and sophisticated page re-directing using server side scripting - these people have forgotten far more than the writer of the article will ever know - believe what you want, I know who I believe!

[QuirkyMomma]

There are hundreds of sites out there that have very high page rank that link out a ton (BlogHer or CraftyCrow). And sites out there that are super popular that rarely link out (pioneer woman). I don't know if there is a silver bullet "answer"... I'm going to do what is comfortable for me and my blog style

[Nathan]

I think the basic thing is watch the quality of links that you link out. When it doubt limit outgoing links for the simple reason that every outbound link is a potential lost visitor. At best an outlink is an open doorway through which your visitor can end up falling. At worst linking to a sketchy, spammy, or porn site is definitely going to get your site penalized.

But if you do link out link to high PR, quality sites that are closely related. Some studies have suggested that it may actually raise your PR.

[Michigal]

Originally Posted by Nathan

But if you do link out link to high PR, quality sites that are closely related. Some studies have suggested that it may actually raise your PR.

What Nathan said^^^

And if you link out to those quality, closely related sites, you're very likely to get a good, relevant link in return.

The only thing I disagree with is losing visitors. If you're providing value to them with relevant, well thought out links, they will certainly be back. After all, isn't that what the interwebs is all about? If it wasn't for linking out, it wouldn't exist.