Competitor Links on Homepage

by macyvo

Posted: 13 years ago 13 replies

Why would the Huffington Post put a huge list of competitor news sites on the bottom of the homepage? It goes against everything that I know about SEO.

They're very focused on SEO and organic placement. They wouldn't do this unless it helped (or at least didn't hurt) SEO.

huffingtonpost.com

#competitor #homepage #links

dvduval 13 years ago

Because they are focused on making their site worthwhile to users which is great for SEO. If you want to track the news, that is great list.
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dburk 13 years ago

Hi macyvo,

That's right, it helps to provide useful content, including links to relevant external websites, this improves your user's experience. Google uses this very principle to great benefit on their own websites.

The concept is well known in SEO as building a hub site.

Building a hub site
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macyvo 13 years ago

Thanks for the replies.

It sounds great in theory, I'm just not sure how Google would translate that into their algorithm.
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- dburk 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by macyvo
  
  Thanks for the replies.
  
  It sounds great in theory, I'm just not sure how Google would translate that into their algorithm.
  
  It generally translates into high SERP rankings.
  
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  macyvo 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by dburk
  
  It generally translates into high SERP rankings.
  
  Ha, funny. But it's not very common practice to list all of your competitors on your homepage.
  
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  dburk 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by macyvo
  
  Ha, funny. But it's not very common practice to list all of your competitors on your homepage.
  
  Hi macyvo,
  
  While it may be an uncommon practice on low traffic websites, it's always been a common trait of many high traffic websites, aka hub sites.
  
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FMLLC 13 years ago

I always wondered how drudge report cool link out to all his competitors but I guess its niche news to begin with so search engine traffic is less random.
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- macyvo 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by FMLLC
  
  I always wondered how drudge report cool link out to all his competitors but I guess its niche news to begin with so search engine traffic is less random.
  
  With Drudge, he's not going after SEO for each article. He's *just* a one page news link destination site.
  
  Huffington spends a lot of time with SEOing each article. They wouldn't be adding links on the homepage (of all pages) if there wasn't something that gave them an SEO boost.
  
  Thanks
  
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Autobot 13 years ago

It helps their Trust Rank. Google likes a site if it is deemed trustworthy. Put a few links to authority sites so Google sees that you aren't leaching.
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Jordan Kovats 13 years ago

Is it possible they own, or are in partnership with those other sites too?
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GeorgR. 13 years ago

There is nothing wrong with linking to related sites or "competitor" sites. Outlinks are also important
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- raviv 13 years ago
  
  Huffingtonpost.com is a PR8 site. Interestingly, they have not a single nofollow link on their home page. Atleast I am sure their competitors links at the bottom of the page are all follow links.
  
  The hype here about leaking PageRank by having outbound links on one's site and thereby leaking PR etc, all these theories are dispelled by this site.
  
  I hope such naysayers take note of this and not be obsessed with linking outwards to authority sites. It is more beneficial to do so than what one would think.
  
  If this theory was valid, Huffington Post should be a PR2 or PR3 site.
  
  Best
  Raviv
  
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iAmNameLess 13 years ago

Apparently google favors site that links out to other relevant sites.
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