So I recently set up a bunch of new websites and wanted to link out to a few authoritative sites right off the start. I added various numbers of outbound links to each channel, but after setting up a number of them I got pretty quick at researching where I should link at, even when I did not know a topic that well.

Outbound links are like a gimme in SEO. It's fairly hard to get the right type of people to link at a new site unless you bribe them or it's a great site, but just about anyone can improve their web community by linking out to some of the better resources on their topic.

Terms like PageRank leakage and bad neighborhood have made some webmasters become greedy or paranoid with their link popularity to the point where their sites become harder to link at because they are islands.

How do you find the best resources to link at?

What do the Various Major Engines Like?
My first port of call is Myriad Search. Search for the core phrase your site is focused on, synonyms, and phrases slightly broader in scope than your keyword phrase.

If you are in a hyper competitive field MSN tends to bring up some fairly spammy results, but sometimes seeing the results mixed together gives you a nice flavor of what they all like and sometimes you will find a nugget ranked at #7 in Yahoo! or #6 in Ask that all the other engines missed.

Unfortunately I am a fairly default searcher (primarily just using Google) but using Myriad helps me get an idea of what people can get away with (as far as content quality goes) in some of the engines.

Some people recommend other meta search engines, but like Berkeley, I think most meta search engines have way to many ads in the content area to be of any use.

Research, Research, Research!
Yahoo! Mindset allows you to bias your search results toward commercial or information result. Tilt that puppy full on research and see what sites they think are informational in nature.

Is that Page Created by the Government?
The Yahoo! Advanced Search page makes it easy to search just .gov or just .edu resources (or both at once). Sometimes this will be a miss, but I have found many great resources using the Yahoo! Advanced Search page.

Directories:
Many directories have picks or a star on favorite sites. DMOZ and the Yahoo! directories are the two most well known directories. You can also browse the Open Directory Project organized by PageRank using the Google Directory.

Don't forget some of the smaller higher quality directories created by librarians. LII is a killer site.

Vertical Authorities:
If you run a finance related site odds are pretty good that you can find something good at Fool.com, MarketWatch.com, Forbes.com, etc.

If you run an automotive site it is easy to link at Edmunds, Nada, Kelly Blue Book, etc.

To drill down go to a relevant vertical authority site and do a site level search for information related to your topic.

Broad Authorities:
When all else fails I like to link to sites with great overall authority scores if they have relevant pages or channels. Some examples include:

• Yahoo! Directory

• DMOZ
• Wikipedia
• About.com

Other sites which have content on a wide array of topics like Answers.com, Topix.net, HowStuffWorks.com, and Britanica.com et al are also easy to link at.

I believe this site lists some of the top .com's.

That is about as far as I have gone with most of these new sites, but sometimes you may want to hunt further if you have an uber spammy topic like cash advance or are trying to go further in depth on a topic that is already well covered. Some other ideas...

Local Search:
If your searches are local in nature you may some of the best information by using regional search databases.

Filetype:
Don't forget that you can specify filetype. Spamming is a game of margins, and on the whole the average .doc or .PDF is going to be of higher quality than the average web page.

Search Engine Showdown has a good chart of search engine features.

Related Sites / Pages:
When you find a good site you can see which sites are related to it. Use a tool like the Google related search or the Touchgraph Google Browser.

Social Bookmarking:
There are a variety of social bookmarking websites which can help you find that key resource you need to reference to complete an article. De.lici.us is probably the most popular.

Link Socially: Tip for Blogs:
Technorati, Feedster, Daypop, Ice Rocket, and Google Blogsearch and Yahoo! Blogsearch are a few of the more well known blog search engines.

If you are running a blog or some type of a topical channel do not forget to use ego stroke techniques in your content and citations. Even if your idea is better than someone else's, or your read their idea after you came up with yours still give them a bit of link love.

Sometimes mentioning a prominent blogger (saying they are so right, they are hosed, they are normally spot on but are messed up on issue x) equates to a quality link back and many secondary links from various non clued up ditto heads :)

Matt Cutts posts on some blog and ping RSS Announcer. A few months ago I also stated my disgust with some of the blog spam salesletters.

For those thinking of investing in blog spam software or other useless related crap, search engines can look at far more than the [delete this pink text] and other obvious software footprints. The Link Spam Detection research paper stated:

A number of recent publications propose link spam detection methods. For instance, Fetterly et al. [Fetterly et al., 2004] analyze the indegree and outdegree distributions of web pages. Most web pages have in- and outdegrees that follow a power-law distribution. Occasionally, however, 17 search engines encounter substantially more pages with the exact same in- or outdegrees than what is predicted by the distribution formula. The authors find that the vast majority of such outliers are spam pages.

It's funny to see the star internet marketing crew being too lazy to even change out their bogus testimonials. But at least in the short term there is far more money is the following model:

• launch a shitty software product

• use hype affiliate marketing and joint venture opportunities with internet marketing expert hucksters
• opt in list
• then email spamming (either directly or via affiliates)
• repeat process

than in creating real value. Maybe eventually people will get a clue.

On the web there are a large number of people who will try to help you along to doing well, and then there are hollow middle men who want to take your money to shit down your throat. Since it costs virtually nothing to make most software or sites you see far more of the latter in the internet marketing realm.

There was recently a WebmasterWorld thread about why people hate Google and other successful companies. Some chalk it up to jelousy, but I just think it is disappointing when sleeze marketing and / or other dubious business practices bring better returns than honest ones.

Here is a perfect example. So about a week ago I gave away one of many copies of my ebook to a charity and recently got this response:

Hi Aaron,

Great book, I finished it a few weeks ago and now need to take notes on all the highlights. And WOW, with all the resources you have, that was in itself would be worth the price of the book, oh wait, it was free for me, :) lol

I have read quite a few books over the last 1 1/2 years on internet marketing, etc, and I really believe you are one of the few guys out there that truly want to help others and not just try and milk their list, as I heard one big name internet marketer say and that's exactly how I feel when im on his list. It really came through in your writing and the fact that you update the book on a continual basis says enough.

I would like your opinion on http://www.xyz software.com/ from what I can tell, it appears to be a great piece of software but I always like to get a 2nd opinion before I buy. (btw, I was referred to this by one of the guys I consider that will sell any and everything, every week it's a new cant miss product some of these guys are hawking so its sometimes tough to tell the gems from the duds)

I responded (roughly):

Hi Name
thanks for liking the ebook

xyz software = crap
here is why...

-qpw ($30 or so) is great
-you should mix stuff up
-sites that accept automated type submissions will tend to be
bad neighborhoods

see also
http://www.search-marketing.info/newsletter/articles/trustrank-company.htm
http://www.martinibuster.net/2005/11/link-development-is-dead.html

FYI, I recently was bogusly sued and my lawyers are raping me, so if
you feel like you got tons of value out of the ebook donations are
accepted
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001130.shtml

Cheers,
Aaron

From that I got no response or donation. Give a guy your business model and your knowledge and get nothing in response. That's pretty useless considering I just saved him $97.

I find people that have no money to support people who help them but want to spend money on the latest interent marketing scam software to be greedy and/or stupid. It's not uncommon for business people to take the low road though.

Traffic Power Sucks saved people over a half million dollars and did not get much in donations from the people they helped when asking for donations to fight the bogus lawsuit they got.

I have about 700 emails in the inbox and I likely will be changing my charity policy soon to be more accomidating to paying customers. I don't expect to profit from helping charities, but the semi shady charity requests weigh on my time and spirits. And I still haven't said thanks to all the people who have helped me fight off the internet marketing scam that is Traffic Power :(

I have not tried this idea out yet, but St0n3y has a new content exchange link exchange idea.

Some people who would be willing to trade content are too lazy to write an article for your site, so what you do is write an article for their site which links back to your site and then write most of an article for your site to link to them.

Leave out a section for pointers or tips and let them write a pointer or two including links back to their site.

Xooglers - a blog about working at Google. Lots of interesting stories. [via SEW]

In other Google news, it appears they are testing click to call and are looking deeply at print ads.

WSJ: Getting an Oil Change Off eBay [sub req]

EBay is aiming to take over the phone book's customary role as the first place people turn to find local services from housecleaners to accountants.

While eBay Inc.'s focus for now is on auto services like oil changes and brake jobs, its goal may be to connect consumers with local businesses of all kinds. This could signal a major shift in the way consumers shop for such services and greatly affect pricing and competition among local shops.

Does eBay have any sort of a map? How are they going to do local without one? Craigslist (which eBay owns part of) links off to Google and Yahoo! maps. I think Google and Yahoo! get information from the same source: Navteq. Not sure if Navteq is going to go after local search as well, but they recently partnered with Zagat.

Any chance someone would want to scoop the leading map company? Are there any other high quality digital mapping companies?

Froogle was recently upgraded, and without a hitch! Google's Froogle Drops eBay for a Day.

When Paypal was upgraded in June Google overshaddowed the news with the announcement of Google Wallet.

Here is yet another article about who should be afraid of Google.