Costs and Benefits of External Linking
Thursday, August 31st, 2006 by Sergio PaluchOften clients ask us about putting links to external sites on their pages. This is an important question that should be given a lot of consideration since a lot of money can be made or lost depending on the decision. This article seeks to help you understand how to figure out whether putting links on your pages will be a net benefit or loss.
Every link – whether a text link, image link, or banner advertisement – is a doorway. As such, every link leading away from your pages is a potential to lose users. Losing users is losing money. However, there are certain benefits to putting links to external web sites on your own pages. If there were no benefits to doing so, no web site would have external links and the World Wide Web would not be a web but rather a collection of unconnected nodes.