After the Panda update I'm focusing a lot on guest blogging to build links. Guest blogging helps out in SEO and it helps to build your brand and stand out as an authority too. Definitely something you should do if you want to rank well post Panda. However I do come across some blogs that has strict linking out policies and doesn't allow links in the article body. This could be to protect themselves from spam links, but linking to authority sites is an excellent way to increase the authority of your site. If you link to external sites very rarely you will have a hard time building your authority. Linking out is especially important if you are a new blog. It will help you to rank well and you will get a chance to connect with bloggers in your niche. As I mentioned in my making money in 2012 post, networking and building connections is very important to succeed in 2012. Lets see how linking out in SEO is beneficial to you.

Linking to Quality Sites will give you a boost in search engine rankings

Importance of Linking Out in SEO

To understand this you need to understand what Google wants and how it works. Google is an algorithm which finds the most suitable pages for some keyword typed in by the user. Their business rely on giving the most relevant resources in the shortest amount of time. If you are linking out to other relevant websites in Google might classify you as a good resource and help you get a boost in rankings. Before you go start linking out from all your blog posts there are two very important things to remember

• When linking out you should link to quality and authority sites. Wikipedia, Government blogs etc are very suitable for this. Linking to spam websites will actually harm your website.
• You need to have other SEO factors like title tags, keyword density, meta description etc. Linking out alone will do you no good. And the No. 1 factor for ranking hasn't changed, you need quality back links. If you are a WordPress blog you can use the Yoast SEO Plug-in to check the onsite factors.