I have been hesitant to link outwardly to very many websites, but, I have been reading that if you are linking out to truly authoritative industries that are helpful to your users and related to your content that this can improve your trust rank.

Anything to this?

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Ryan Ward, REALTOR® - Keller Williams Realty Consultants. (404) 630-3187
Atlanta Real Estate - My featured area is Alpharetta Real Estate and it is where I call home. Read my Atlanta Real Estate blog.

Here are a couple good articles I've saved in my favorites on outbound linking and their effects on SEO:

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2...-seo-and-more/

http://www.jimboykin.com/co-citation...ects-your-seo/

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It is my opinion that any outbound links are customer service links and there is nothing wrong with this as long as they are relevant. Example: We have links to: a local little league site, the elect./gas/water companies etc. and even a few local businesses: Home Inspectors, furniture and bedding stores etc. We have no links to irrelevant sites such as: Gambling, jewlery or electonic sales sites.

It is also my opinion, the issue with building a website is one where the builder will focus on the SE's perspective and fail miserably at the customers perspective.

We have targeted our site strictly to our customers satisfaction in giving them the information and content they want. We base this content on: local news, readers requests and referrals requests.

While we do structure the site with SE in mind, we employ what I believe are good SEO practices: Good content, Customer value added outlinks, Privacy Policy, easy navigation and free MLS access (we are not obligated to require registration by our MLS) etc.

There is also a picture of Jennifer on the main page. Many SEO experts have discounted the factor of her picture, but I can tell you emphatically that our visitors appreciate seeing who they will be doing business with. We know this, because they have responded to us as such. Heck, she even got asked for a date by a visiting customer: LOL!

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Jessie: Panama City Beach Real Estate, Panama City Real Estate and Panama City Beach Condos

When linking out to websites (For your customers and not thinking of SEO) you should never have to ask this. Basically the premise is, if you focus on what is good for your users, search engines will understand and reward you appropriately.

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Want to save up to 50% off Real estate webmasters product websites & common upgrades? Check out my latest blog post regarding our end of the year sale.

Also, TrustRank has to do with inbound links, not where you link to. If you have links from highly trusted sources you get more TrustRank.

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Free Mortgage Calculator and Amortization Calculator at www.CalculatorZone.com

TrustRank has to do with both incoming and outgoing links and is determined by your overall link pattern.

Linking out to sites that are useful for your visitors will not harm your trust or rankings.

What you have to be careful about is when you start to link to bad neighbourhoods (link farms, Free for all sites, sites clearly not related to your topic, etc).

The same is the case for incoming links (especially when you return the link) – you have to be careful where and how you get your links.

If your link patterns (both incoming and out going links) clearly show the search engines that you are trying to improve rankings or getting higher PR then you might get hurt in the end.

Accom, I very much agree with what you said about linking in general, but to be perfectly accurate your site's "TrustRank" only has to do with who links to you. Here's the paper that describes TrustRank:

http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/2004-52

Clearly, linking to to bad sites can cause you to lose "trust" with the search engines, but TrustRank is only incoming. Your way of thinking about it is easier for the average webmaster, though :-)

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Free Mortgage Calculator and Amortization Calculator at www.CalculatorZone.com

Jessie you may think this is funny, but I stumbled upon this Atlanta real estate site one time that had what it looked like a 1 way link to a Latino Dance site... I don't think thats relevant.

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Mike Giraldi, REALTOR® - Solid Source Realty Atlanta
Direct - 770.361.8659

Search all Atlanta real estate for sale including residential, commercial and land. Locate homes for sale in the Cumming, GA real estate and Canton Real Estate markets.

If it was an agent that was targeting the Latino demographic... who linked out to a local Latino dance site, it would be very relevant.

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---cK

CK Chung is an independent SEO consultant who provides premium Holistic SEO services, including services specific to Real Estate SEO. You can find his alter-ego, Kid Disco, spouting off on his SEO blog at SEOdisco.

You might be getting confused with PageRank. TrustRank has to do more with the probability of a page being reputable. One of the core theories behind TrustRank is that good pages will seldom link out to bad ones. So, yes, it does have to do with who you link to (outbound links).

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---cK

CK Chung is an independent SEO consultant who provides premium Holistic SEO services, including services specific to Real Estate SEO. You can find his alter-ego, Kid Disco, spouting off on his SEO blog at SEOdisco.