Factoring in OBL to Open Site Explorer

[theshortstack]

Morning all - I've been using Open Site Explorer a fair bit since I signed up to SEOMoz a couple of months ago and found it to be a little different to other tools in the past, so would welcome some thoughts on what I should be looking for when I run reports.

For example, I've always thought that Outbound links should be important when deciding whether to place a link on a a particular site, but in OSE I'm only given a Page Ranking and a Domain Ranking.

Am I therefore to understand that these two factors outrank OBL and that the number of links on a page don't matter? Or have these been factored into the overall Page rank already?

Thanks a lot for your help,
Simon

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Yes and no. The number of outbound links on a page is an important factor, but it can be outweighed by a huge number of other factors, such as the position of the link on a page, how "editorial" it is, and other considerations.

My favorite article on the subject. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links

Even though OSE doesn't report these, they are still important considerations to look at. For the most part, you'll have to use your best human judgement when evaluating link targets and ask questions like:

Am I likely to get a link high on the page?

Is the link likely to last, or get pushed to the archives of another URL?

Will relevant text surrond the link, or will it appear simply as an item in a long list of links?

Etc, etc.

MozRank, PageAuthority, DomainAuthority and MozTrust are all great metrics for determining the value of a link, but they are not the final word. In aggregate, I would say they are more important than looking at the number of outbound links, but in the end each link target must be judged on its own merits.