I was working with one of our
clients recently, going through the steps of setting up his Blogsite, when we came to the topic of web links.

"Should I have links pointing off my site?" He wondered. Without hesitation I
answered with a firm, "Yes."

It’s not that I don’t understand his concern.  Conventional marketing
thought would say that once you’ve "captured" a set of eyes you should do
everything in your power to keep them focused on you and your products and
services.  Online, this thought translates into a caveat:

Don’t give your visitors a chance to leave your site because they
will.

So why, then, would I tell you otherwise?  When it comes to search, and
especially in terms of Google search visibility, the old rules don’t apply.

Darren Rowse at Problogger.net recently posted on this very topic.

He examines the different types of links–blogrolls, textual,
trackbacks–that are specific to blogs, and he explains how each one of them
influences search visibility.

The bottom line, though, is simple.  The major engines rank sites in
part based on their relation to other websites.  True, we all want inbound
links.  We want a PR of 10 so we go and
try to get every website possible to point to us.

That’s not enough because it isn’t a mutual relationship.  So to truly
achieve search visibility with your blog you can’t be too afraid to have
links pointing away from you.

Send your visitors away.  The higher search visibility you achieve will
more than make up for any lost traffic.